An Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people onboard crashed Wednesday near the Kazakhstani city of Aktau, leaving at least 32 survivors, according to officials. More than 30 people may be dead.
The plane was en route from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry said in a Telegram statement that those on board included five crew. A total of 29 survivors, including two children, have been hospitalized, the ministry told Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
Another Russian news agency, Interfax quoted medical workers as saying that four bodies have been recovered and emergency workers at the scene as saying that both pilots, according to a preliminary assessment, died in the crash.
The Embraer 190 aircraft made an emergency landing 3 km from the city, Azerbaijan Airlines said earlier.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, later revising that number to 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash, bringing the death toll down.
The Prosecutor General’s Office in Azerbaijan later reported that at least 32 people survived the crash, adding that the number wasn’t final. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that some of them were in critical condition.
The number of survivors could mean that more than 30 people may be dead.
According to Kazakhstani officials, those aboard the plane included 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhstani and three Kyrgyzstani citizens, it said.
RIA Novosti quoted Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, as saying that preliminary information showed that the pilot had chosen to divert to Kazakhstan’s Aktau after a bird strike on the aircraft led to “an emergency situation on board”.
Mobile phone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball. Other footage showed part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft, lying upside in the grass. The footage corresponded to the plane’s colors and its registration number.
Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the wreckage of the plane.
Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed the aircraft making what appeared to be a figure-right once nearing the airport in Aktau, its altitude moving up and down substantially over the last minutes of the flight before hitting the ground.
FlightRadar24 separately said in an online post that the aircraft had faced “strong GPS jamming” which “made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data,” referring to the information that allows flight-tracking websites to follow planes in flight. Russia has been blamed in the past for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.
In a statement, Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep members of the public updated and changed its social media banners to solid black.