Wreckage of the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 passenger plane near Aktau, Kazakhstan, 25 December 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/STR
A Russian surface-to-air missile was fired at the Azerbaijan Airlines plane which crashed at Aktau Airport in southwestern Kazakhstan killing 38 people on Wednesday, Azerbaijani government sources have confirmed to Euronews.
The missile was fired at the plane “during drone activity in Grozny”, Euronews reported, while the shrapnel “hit the passengers and cabin crew as it exploded next to the aircraft mid-flight”.
The plane was then ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan as it was not allowed to land at any nearby Russian airports, the sources said.
The report appears to confirm previous speculation that the plane might have been shot down after footage from the crash site appeared to show holes in the tail of the plane, amid reports of a Ukrainian drone attack on Chechnya early on Wednesday.
No official cause of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash has yet been given. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday Moscow would not “put forward hypotheses” about the cause of the crash while the investigation was ongoing, while Kazakhstan’s Senate speaker Maulen Ashimbaev dismissed “speculation” Thursday about a possible attack on the plane as “wrong and unethical”.
The Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190, which had 67 people on board, was on a scheduled flight from Baku to Grozny, in the North Caucasus, on Wednesday morning, but was diverted to Makhachkala, in neighbouring Dagestan, and then to Aktau, where it crashed while coming into land.
According to air traffic monitoring service Flightradar24, the plane was struggling to maintain altitude for over an hour after being diverted from Grozny, indicating “possible control issues with the aircraft”.
At least 29 passengers who were seated in the tail end of the plane are reported to have survived the crash.
