Moscow — An Azerbaijani airliner with dozens on board crashed Wednesday in the western Kazakh city of Aktau, and Kazakhstan's Emergencies Ministry said at least 28 people survived and were hospitalized.
In a Telegram statement, the ministry confirmed that 67 people, including five crew members, were on board the plane. The Russian news agency Interfax, citing the ministry, said that there could be more survivors.
The Embraer 190 plane made an emergency landing about two miles from Aktau, Azerbaijan Airlines reported earlier.
Murat Usubali / Anadolu via Getty Images
Kazakhstan's Emergencies Ministry initially said 25 people had survived the crash, later revising that number to 27 and then 28 as search and rescue operations continued at the crash site, lowering the possible death toll.
Initially, it was planned that the plane would fly from the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus.
A spokesman for Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency said preliminary information indicated the pilot decided to head to Oktau after a collision with a bird on the airliner led to an “emergency on board”.
Russian news agencies report that the plane was diverted due to fog in Grozny, Reuters reports.
“Interfax” reported that the authorities of Kazakhstan said that they began to find out the possible causes of the disaster, including a technical problem, according to Reuters.
Mobile phone footage circulating online shows the plane descending steeply before crashing into the ground in a fireball. Crews extinguished the fire on the spot, the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported.
Other footage showed part of the fuselage detached from the wings and the rest of the plane lying upside down in the grass. The footage matched the aircraft's color and registration number.
An unverified video of the crash shows people stumbling over a fragment of the fuselage that remained intact, Reuters reported.
Azamat Sarsenbayev / REUTERS
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed that the plane made what looked like a figure to the right as it approached the airport in Aktau, its altitude changing significantly up and down in the final minutes of the flight before it hit the ground.
FlightRadar24 separately said online that the plane encountered “severe GPS interference” that “caused the plane to transmit poor ADS-B data,” citing information that allows flight-tracking websites to track planes in flight. In the past, Russia has been blamed for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.
Embraer did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday morning. In a statement, Azerbaijan Airlines said it would inform the public and changed its social media banners to all black.