Azerbaijan is marking a day of mourning after a local airline’s passenger plane crashed off the coast of the Caspian Sea.Authorities across Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia are investigating the emergency landing on Wednesday morning that killed at least 38 people.
Here’s what we know about the crash.
Where did the passenger plane crash?
The plane crashed about 3km (1.8 miles) from the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.
It was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, capital of the Chechnya region in southern Russia.
(Al Jazeera)
Who was on board?
The Embraer 190 aircraft, flight number J2-8243, carried 62 passengers and five crew members.
According to Kazakh officials, the people on board were citizens of four different countries:
42 Azerbaijani citizens
16 Russian citizens
6 Kazakh citizens
3 Kyrgyz citizens
How many of them survived?
There are 32 survivors, including two children, who have been hospitalised, with many in critical condition. Many were pulled out from the wreckage, while some, according to first responders and video footage, dragged themselves out, bloodied. Advertisement
Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev announced that 38 people had been killed.
Russian news agency Interfax quoted emergency workers at the scene as saying that both pilots, according to a preliminary assessment, died in the crash.
Why did the plane crash?
The crash was reportedly due to an “emergency situation” onboard after a bird strike, Russia’s aviation watchdog said on Telegram.
The plane had to divert from its original route because of heavy fog in Grozny, its intended destination, and make an emergency landing.
Commercial aviation-tracking websites recorded the flight travelling north along its scheduled route on the west coast before it …