An Azerbaijani passenger plane with 67 people on board crashed in the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, officials said, adding that more than 30 people were believed to have died.
Kazakhstan's Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement on Telegram that at least 32 people survived and there were five crew members on board. At least 29 people were taken to hospital, the ministry reported to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
The Russian news agency Interfax quoted information from medical workers that four bodies had been recovered, and emergency services workers present at the scene, who, according to preliminary estimates, both pilots died in the crash.
As Azerbaijan Airlines reported earlier, the Embraer 190 plane made an emergency landing three kilometers from the city.
The ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, but later revised the number to 29 as search and rescue operations continued at the crash site, reducing the apparent death toll.
The Office of the Prosecutor General in Azerbaijan later said that at least 32 people survived, adding that this was not the final number. The number of survivors could mean the death of more than 30 people.
The plane was originally supposed to fly from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus. According to Azerbaijan Airlines, 37 passengers were Azerbaijani citizens. According to her, there were also 16 Russian citizens, six Kazakh citizens and three Kyrgyz citizens.
Bird strike, GPS disruption
RIA Novosti quotes Russia's civil aviation authority Rosaviatia as saying that preliminary information shows that the pilot decided to return to Aktau after a bird-plane collision led to an “emergency situation on board.”
Mobile phone footage circulating online shows the plane descending steeply before hitting the ground in a ball of fire. 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 plane's colors and registration number.
Some videos posted on social media show survivors pulling fellow passengers from the plane wreckage.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed the plane made what appeared to be a rightward figure after approaching Aktau airport, with its altitude increasing and decreasing significantly in the final minutes of the flight before it hit the ground.
FlightRadar24 separately said in an online post that the plane experienced “strong GPS signal interference” that “resulted in the transmission of invalid ADS-B data,” referring to information that allows flight tracking sites to track planes in flight.
Russia has been blamed in the past for jamming GPS transmissions in the wider region.
Embraer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday morning. In a statement, Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep citizens updated and changed its social media banners to solid black.
Azerbaijan's state news agency Azerbaijan reported that an official delegation consisting of Azerbaijan's Minister of Emergency Situations, the country's deputy prosecutor general and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines was sent to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation.”
The press service of the President of Azerbaijan reported that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who was going to St. Petersburg, returned to Azerbaijan after hearing the news about the disaster. Aliyev was scheduled to take part in an informal meeting of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc of former Soviet states created after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Aliyev expressed condolences to the victims' families in a statement on social media. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish the injured a speedy recovery,” he wrote.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev by phone and expressed his condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The authorities of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan were investigating the crash. Embraer told The Associated Press in a statement that the company “stands ready to assist all appropriate authorities.”