By LeSiteinfo with MAP
December 26 has been declared a day of mourning in Azerbaijan following the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) airliner which took place near the town of Aktau, in western Kazakhstan, announced on Wednesday AZERTAC, the official press agency of this country.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, who cut short his visit to Russia, signed a decree on this matter, AZERTAC reported. The Embraer 190, which was operating the Baku-Grozny route and carrying 67 people on board including 62 passengers and 5 crew members, made an emergency landing three kilometers from the town of Aktau, killing four people while that 32 people survived.
The working group, set up by the ombudsman institutions of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan following the accident, indicated that the two pilots died. Aliyev sent a high-level delegation to investigate the AZAL plane crash in Kazakhstan, the press service of the head of state informed.
“It is too early to talk about the reasons for the crash of the AZAL airliner,” the head of state said during a meeting at Heydar Aliyev International Airport. The AZAL plane “changed course due to worsening weather conditions and headed towards Aktau airport, where the accident occurred during landing,” he said. -he said during this meeting about the plane crash.
“The incident must be thoroughly investigated,” he added, recalling that a criminal investigation has been launched by the Prosecutor General's Office of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani public will be regularly informed of the results of the commission's work and the development of the criminal proceedings, assured the Azerbaijani President, who had previously expressed his condolences to the families and friends of the victims of this accident.
For her part, the first vice-president of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Aliyeva, expressed her condolences following this crash. The crashed plane was carrying 42 nationals from Azerbaijan, 16 from Russia, six from Kazakhstan and three from Kyrgyzstan, said Kairat Zhanaspayev, head of the emergency rescue services department at the Kazakh Emergency Situations Ministry. Kazakhstan, quoted by the media.
The airline AZAL has revealed the lists of passengers and crew members of the crashed plane.
