The Russian government has warned against promoting “hypotheses” about the cause of the crash of a Russia-bound passenger plane that killed 38 people in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.
Footage of the shattered fuselage appears to show shrapnel damage and some aviation experts suggest the Azerbaijan Airlines plane may have been hit by air defense systems over the Russian republic of Chechnya.
Before crashing near the Kazakh city of Aktau, the plane was diverted across the Caspian Sea from its destination in Chechnya to western Kazakhstan.
Twenty-nine of the 67 people on board survived. Azerbaijan held a national day of mourning for the victims of the crash on Thursday.
“This is a great tragedy that has become a great sorrow for the Azerbaijani people,” President Ilham Aliyev said on Thursday.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It would be wrong to put forward any hypotheses before the conclusions of the investigation. We certainly won't do that, and no one should. We have to wait for the investigation to be completed.”
The Embraer 190 took off from the Azerbaijani capital Baku on Wednesday morning. He was due to fly to Grozny in Chechnya but was diverted due to fog, the airline said.
A surviving passenger told Russian television that he believed the pilot tried twice to land in thick fog over Grozny before “the third time something exploded … part of the skin of the plane blew off.”
The plane was diverted to Aktau Airport, about 450 km (280 miles) to the east. Footage shows the plane heading towards the ground at high speed 3km (1.9 miles) short of the runway before bursting into flames as it landed.
Kazakh authorities have recovered the flight data recorder and an investigation is underway. Shortly after the crash, reports on Russian state television said the most likely cause was a bird strike.
But that kind of collision usually results in the plane skidding to the nearest airport, aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told Reuters. “You can lose control of the airplane, but you don't fly wildly off course as a result,” he said.
Justin Crump of risk consultancy Sibylline said the pattern of damage inside and outside the plane indicated that Russian air defenses operating in Grozny may have caused the crash.
“It looks very much like an anti-aircraft missile detonation to the rear and left of the aircraft if you look at the shrapnel pattern we're seeing,” he told BBC Radio 4.
Authorities in the nearby Russian regions of Ingushetia and North Ossetia reported drone strikes on Wednesday morning, Reuters reports.
The head of Kazakhstan's senate, Ashimbaev Maulen, stressed that the cause of the crash is still unknown.
“None of these countries – Azerbaijan, Russia or Kazakhstan – are interested in withholding information. All information will be made available to the public,” he said.
On board were mostly citizens of Azerbaijan, but there were also passengers from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Video footage shows survivors crawling from the wreckage, some with visible injuries. The injured are being treated in a hospital, and 11 are in the intensive care unit, AFP reported.
Embraer, a Brazilian manufacturer, is a smaller rival to Boeing and Airbus and has a good safety record.