At least twelve people who were traveling on the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane that crashed today near the airport in the city of Aktau, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, survived the accident and were hospitalized, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Health. from Kazakhstan. The plane was carrying 67 people, including five crew members.
“From the scene of the plane crash, 12 people with various injuries were transferred to the Mangistau regional hospital in Aktau,” according to health sources.
The official Kazakh agency Kazinform reported that on board the plane, an Embraer 190, which was flying from Baku to Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, there were 105 passengers and 5 crew members, but Azerbaijan Airlines stated that on board the plane There were 67 people including the five crew members, “It was a regular flight. He had to fly to Grozny, but due to fog they sent him to Makhachkala and from there, apparently, to Aktau,” a spokesperson for the airport in the Chechen capital told the TASS agency.
According to the Interfax agency, most of the passengers on the aircraft are Azerbaijanis. A fire broke out at the scene of the accident and was put out by firefighters, according to sources from the Kazakh emergency services.
According to the crisis office operating at the scene of the tragedy, “the crew sent a distress signal at 08:35 local time (03:35 GMT) and reported a failure in the control system.” “Then at 08:49 they requested an emergency landing in Aktau and tried to do so in direct mode, however, at 09:28 the plane crashed into the ground,” they noted. Azerbaijan Airlines noted that according to preliminary data the accident may have been caused by the collision of the aircraft with a flock of birds.
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