Crash in Kazakhstan: national mourning in Azerbaijan, the trail of a missile mentioned

Azerbaijan mourned its dead on Thursday as it observed a day of national mourning after an Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed the day before in western Kazakhstan with 67 people on board, 38 of whom died.

According to the airline, the Embraer 190, which carried 62 passengers and five crew members, was operating a flight between Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, and Grozny, capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Chechnya. It crashed near the Caspian Sea port of Aktau and caught fire.

An investigation is underway, according to Kazakhstan, but some military and aviation experts have already affirmed that the aircraft, which was flying over an area of ​​the Russian Caucasus where a drone attack was reported, could have been shot down. accidentally by a Russian air defense system.

Speculations that both Russia and Kazakhstan have tried to extinguish.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov assured Thursday that it was necessary wait for the end of the investigation.

It would be inappropriate to make assumptions prior to the findings of the investigation. We won't do it and no one shouldhe insisted.

The authorities of Kazakhstan, a close ally of Russia, also denounced speculations.

The President of the Kazakh Senate, the upper house of the Parliament of Kazakhstan, Maulen Ashimbaev, assured that he was not not possible to say for the moment the cause of this catastrophe.

Lots of shrapnel

For his part, a Russian blogger and military expert, Yuri Podoliaka, assured on Telegram that visible holes on the plane's fuselage were similar to those that could be caused by an anti-aircraft missile system.

What we actually see is the testimony of a passenger who received shrapnel in his life jacket, […] that the cabin, the entire rear part, the fin, is completely riddled with shardsdeclared to theAFP a former expert from the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA).

There are still a lot of pieces of shrapnelhe underlined, believing that this image was reminiscent of that of the Boeing of the Malaysia Airlinesof flight MH17, shot down by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine in 2014.

Azerbaijan Airlines initially claimed that the plane had struck a flock of birds, before withdrawing this information.

For its part, the regional department of the Kazakh Ministry of Health reported, in a press release, theballoon explosion on board the device, without further details.

The Kazakh Interior Ministry has opened an investigation into violation of air transport safety and operational rules.

According to the Kazakh Emergency Situations Ministry, 38 people were killed in the crash, and 29 survivors, including three children, were hospitalized.

There were 37 Azerbaijani nationals, six Kazakh nationals, three Kyrgyz citizens and 16 Russian citizens on board the plane, according to the Kazakh Transport Ministry.

National mourning

According to the Azerbaijani agency Azertac, 12 of the survivors are due to return to Azerbaijan on Thursday, where a day of national mourning was declared Thursday by President Ilham Aliev, who interrupted his visit to Russia on Wednesday to return to his country.

Jalil Aliev, father of a flight attendant, Hokoumé Alieva, killed in the crash, toldAFP by phone that this should have been her last flight before she started working as a lawyer for Azerbaijan Airlines.

Why did his young life end so tragically? he said, in a trembling voice, before hanging up.

An Ilyushin-76 plane brought nine injured Russian nationals, including a child, from Aktau to Moscow on Thursday, according to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

Depending on the service Flightradar24which allows the movement of planes to be followed in real time, the aircraft crossed the Caspian Sea, deviating from its normal route, before circling above the area where it crashed.

A Kazakh resident, Elmira, told the local branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) that she was near the crash site and, with others, had run to the scene to help survivors.

They were covered in blood. They were crying. They were begging for helpshe said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to his Azerbaijani counterpart during a telephone conversation, according to the Kremlin.

Russia also announced that it had dispatched a plane with medical personnel and equipment to Kazakhstan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called his Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Russian counterparts to express his deep condolencesaccording to the CCTV channel.