In Kazakhstan, 38 passengers were killed Wednesday when an Azerbaijani airliner with 67 people on board crashed near the city of Aktau. Twenty-nine survivors were hospitalized. The Embraer 190 passenger jet had been en route from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny when it veered hundreds of miles off its scheduled route before crashing on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea. A Russian civil aviation official said a preliminary investigation revealed a bird strike led pilots to attempt to divert the flight. But a Ukrainian official said Russia had used a surface-to-air missile system to shoot the plane down, after mistaking it for a Ukrainian drone. That claim was bolstered by footage from the crash site appearing to show shrapnel damage to the plane’s tail section.
Azerbaijani Airlines Crash in Kazakhstan Leaves Behind 38 Dead, 29 Survivors
HeadlineDec 26, 2024