Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared a day of national mourning this Thursday, December 26 in the country.
Striking images and miracles. The day after the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in western Kazakhstan with 67 people on board, 38 of whom died according to local authorities, the circumstances of this accident have not yet been established.
According to Azerbaijan Airlines, the Embraer 190 was operating a flight between Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, and Grozny, capital of the Russian Caucasian Republic of Chechnya.
According to the company, 62 passengers and five crew members were on board the plane which “made an emergency landing” about three kilometers from Aktau.
“I haven’t seen her again.”
In a Kazakh hospital, where the survivors were taken, several of them expressed their concern. According to Kazakh authorities, 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian citizens, six Kazakhs and three Kyrgyz citizens were on board the plane.
“When the plane crashed, my wife was sitting next to me. I haven't seen her since the accident and I don't know where she is,” said one survivor.
Speaking to CNN, a woman named Elmira, who participated in the rescue operations, remembers the violence of the moment. “The front of the plane was on fire. We rescued the survivors. Their bodies were covered in blood. They were crying. Everyone was asking for help,” she said.
“A little girl came out. She looked at me and said: 'Save my mother, my mother is still here'. She was crying and begging: 'Save her, save her'”, adds the latter.
According to Elmira, the priority was to allow surviving passengers to protect themselves from the cold, as temperatures can drop to around 0°C in the region at this time of year.
“It was cold outside. None of them had jackets, just light sweaters. We kept them on the bus until the ambulance arrived,” she recalls.
“Everything is fine”
At Grozny airport, the flight's final destination, there is also concern as the passengers' relatives wait for news. “I just received a photo and a video indicating that my nephew is alive and in good health, he is walking on his own, everything is fine,” one of them finally rejoices.
Azerbaijan Airlines initially claimed that the plane had hit a flock of birds, before withdrawing this information. The Russian civil aviation agency (Rosaviatsia) also spoke of a “collision with birds” on Wednesday morning, citing “preliminary” information.
According to the Flightradar24 service, which tracks the movement of planes in real time, the aircraft crossed the Caspian Sea, deviating from its normal route, before circling above the area where it crashed. .
The Kazakh Interior Ministry announced the opening of an investigation into “violation of air transport safety and operational rules.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who arrived in Russia to participate in an informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) near St. Petersburg (northwest) with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, decided to interrupt his visit and urgently return to Azerbaijan, according to the press service of the Azerbaijani presidency. He declared a day of national mourning this Thursday in the country.
