A passenger plane carrying 67 people crashed in Kazakhstan on Wednesday morning after colliding with birds while traveling from Azerbaijan to Russia, authorities said.
The Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which crashed near Aktau, a city in southwestern Kazakhstan, had 62 passengers and five crew members on board, Kazakhstan’s emergencies ministry said in a post on Telegram. It said that at least 28 people had survived, with some 22 taken to hospital including two children.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that the passengers were 37 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russians, 6 Kazakh citizens, and 3 Kyrgyz citizens, citing the Kazakh Ministry of Transport.
The flight was en route from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny in Russia’s Chechnya region but was diverted to the Russian city of Makhachkala, about 100 miles east of Gronzny, due to fog, the press service of the Grozny airport told Russian state news agency TASS.
The Embraer 190 aircraft made an emergency landing approximately 1.8 miles away from the city of Aktau, according to a statement released on Telegram by Azerbaijan Airlines.
A preliminary investigation found the plane collided with birds and was diverted to Aktau due to an emergency on board, according to a statement issued on Telegram by Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsia.
The investigation is ongoing and additional information regarding the incident will be provided, Azerbaijan Airlines said in a statement released on Telegram.
There was a fire at the crash site but this has been “completely extinguished,” Kazakhstan’s emergencies ministry said.
It added that a total of 150 personnel and 45 units of equipment were involved in the emergency response.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had called his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, to express his condolences.
“We deeply sympathize with those who lost their loved ones in this air crash, and wish a speedy recovery to those who survived,” Peskov said, adding that Aliyev had been forced to leave St. Petersburg following the crash.
Chechnyan leader Ramzan Kadyrov expressed his condolences to the families of the deceased passengers in a post on his Telegram account on Wednesday morning.