A complete of 38 passengers have been killed, whereas 29 survived on Wednesday after an Azerbaijan Airways flight from Baku to Grozny crashed because it tried to make an emergency touchdown close to the town of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
The investigation into the Azerbaijan Airways Flight 8432 crash in Aktau on Wednesday will now give attention to what weapon prompted the incident, Azerbaijan’s Minister of Digital Improvement and Transport Rashad Nabiyev stated on Friday after talking with the survivors in neighbouring Kazakhstan.
On Thursday, Azerbaijani authorities sources confirmed to Euronews that an preliminary investigation revealed a Russian surface-to-air missile was fired on the airplane on Wednesday because it flew over Chechnya.
Azerbaijan Airways’ Embraer 190 was flying from the nation’s capital of Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya.
Throughout its flight, the airplane crashed while making an attempt to an emergency touchdown within the metropolis of Aktau in southwestern Kazakhstan — killing 38 folks and leaving 29 survivors injured.
Sources stated that regardless of the pilot’s requests for an emergency touchdown, the plane was not allowed to land at Russian airports, leaving it to divert from its path in the direction of the Kazakh metropolis throughout the Caspian Sea.
An official probe into the crash has not but concluded. Nevertheless, the survivors informed the authorities they heard three blast sounds that appeared to return from outdoors because the plane flew over Grozny.
“Throughout our go to to survivors, together with these with Russian citizenship, all of them, with out exception, said that they heard three blast sounds when the plane was above Grozny metropolis,” Nabiyev informed the Baku-based worldwide outlet AnewZ.
“They indicated that these sounds got here from outdoors, suggesting there was an exterior affect on the airplane,” he added.
One flight attendant sustained accidents to her hand, whereas one other passenger suffered accidents to her hand and leg because of the explosions, Nabiyev added.
“In different footage, holes are seen on the airplane’s wing, together with numerous indicators of harm contained in the airplane, notably in its inside elements, brought on by what seems to be an affect from sharp exterior objects,” he defined.
“Our investigation crew, together with aviation specialists invited for this case, will now look at what sort of weapon — or relatively what sort of rocket — was used.”
Airways refuse to fly over Russia
On Friday, Azerbaijan Airways introduced it could droop flights from Baku to seven Russian airports, together with Grozny, till the ultimate outcomes of an investigation into the crash have been launched.
As well as, Kazakhstan’s Qazaq Air stated it could droop its flights from Astana to Yekaterinburg, citing an ongoing danger evaluation of flights to Russia.
Israel’s El Al stated flights from Tel Aviv to Moscow for this week could be minimize because of “developments in Russia’s airspace”.
Moscow has remained tight-lipped about suspicions from studies and aviation consultants that the airplane might have been hit by a Russian air defence missile.
On Friday, Russia’s aviation chief stated a Ukrainian drone assault was beneath approach within the area of Chechnya on the time an Azerbaijani airliner tried to land earlier than diverting to Kazakhstan and crashing there earlier this week.
