Plane crash in Kazakhstan left dozens dead but 25 survived, officials say

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet with dozens on board crashed Wednesday in western Kazakhstan, the Kazakh transport ministry said. It was flying from the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya in Russia, when it went down near the city of Aktau, the ministry said.

The Kazakh emergency ministry said the plane had 62 passengers and five crew members on board and 25 people survived. Twenty-two were hospitalized, the ministry said.

Azerbaijan Airlines, that country’s flag carrier, said the Embraer 190 had “made an emergency landing” around two miles from Aktau, an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.

Crews put out a fire at the site, the emergency ministry said.

Unverified video of the crash showed the aircraft bursting into flames as it hit the ground and thick black smoke then rising, with people stumbling from a piece of the fuselage that had remained intact, Reuters reported.

Russian news agencies said the plane had been rerouted due to fog in Grozny, Reuters added, noting that Russia’s aviation agency said initial information indicated a bird strike prompted the pilot to make an emergency landing.   

Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that Kazakh authorities said they’d started probing different possible causes of the crash, including a technical problem, according to Reuters.