Dozens of people are feared dead after a plane crash in Kazakhstan, the country’s Ministry of Emergency Situations says.
Authorities said there were 67 people on board the Azerbaijan Airlines liner, including five crew members.
Early information shared by the ministry said there were 28 survivors, meaning more than 30 people likely died.
All but three of the survivors had been taken to hospital.
Russian news agency Interfax cited the ministry as saying that there may be more survivors and quoted medical workers at the scene as saying that four bodies have been recovered.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, later revising that number to 27 and then to 28 as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash, bringing the apparent death toll down.
Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 was heading from the capital of Baku to Grozny in Russia early on Christmas morning (afternoon AEDT).
The Embraer 190 aircraft made an emergency landing at Aktau airport, according to Azerbaijan Airlines.
It said 37 passengers were Azerbaijani citizens. There were also 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhstani and three Kyrgyzstani citizens, it said.
About 150 emergency personnel worked at the scene and extinguished a fire that had broken out, authorities said.
A spokesperson for Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said that preliminary information showed that the pilot had chosen to divert to Aktau after a bird strike on the aircraft led to “an emergency situation on board”.
Mobile phone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball.
Other footage showed part of its fuselage ripped away from the wings and the rest of the aircraft, lying upside in the grass. The footage corresponded to the plane’s colours and its registration number.
Some of the videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers away from the wreckage of the plane.
Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed the aircraft making what appeared to be a figure-right once nearing the airport in Aktau, its altitude moving up and down substantially over the last minutes of the flight before impacting the ground.
FlightRadar24 separately said in an online post that the aircraft had faced “strong GPS jamming” which “made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data”, referring to the information that allows flight-tracking websites to follow 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 early Wednesday morning.
In a statement, Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep members of the public updated and changed its social media banners to solid black.
Azerbaijan’s state news agency, Azertac, said that an official delegation consisting of Azerbaijan’s emergency situations minister, the country’s deputy general prosecutor, and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines had been dispatched to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation”.
– With Associated Press.
