Sharjah 24 – AFP: An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan after travelling far off course, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, officials said.
The Embraer 190 aircraft that was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia, but instead flew across the Caspian Sea and went down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
The plane's course on the Flight Radar website showed it flying away from its normal route, crossing the Caspian Sea and then circling over the area where it eventually crashed near Aktau, which is an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the sea.
"The situation is not very good, 38 dead," Russia's Interfax news agency quoted Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev as saying.
The Kazakh emergency situations ministry reported that "29 survivors including three children have been hospitalised."
Azerbaijan Airlines reported that 67 people were on board -- 62 passengers and five crew members.
The Kazakh transport ministry said the plane was carrying 37 nationals from Azerbaijan, six from Kazakhstan, three from Kyrgyzstan and 16 from Russia.
"A plane doing the Baku-Grozny route crashed near the city of Aktau. It belongs to Azerbaijan Airlines," the Kazakh transport ministry said on Telegram.
Azerbaijan Airlines, the country's flag carrier, said the plane "made an emergency landing" around three kilometres (1.9 miles) from Aktau.
The Kazakh emergency situations ministry said its staff put out a fire which broke out when the plane crashed.
It said 150 emergency workers were at the scene.
Kazakhstan said it had opened an investigation into the cause of the crash, which was not immediately clear.
Azerbaijan Airlines initially said the plane flew threw a flock of birds before withdrawing the statement.
"We cannot disclose any investigation results at this time," the office of Azerbaijan's prosecutor general said in a statement.
"All possible scenarios are being examined, and the necessary expert analyses are underway," it added.
It said an investigative team led by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan has been dispatched to Kazakhstan and is working at the crash site.
Kazakhstan's prosecutor in charge of transportation cases, Timur Suleymanov, said the plane's flight data recorder had been found, Interfax news agency reported.
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