Aktau, Dec 25 (Agency) A passenger plane from Azerbaijan Airlines with 67 people onboard crashed in Kazakhstan’s Aktau on Wednesday after collision with a flock of birds, authorities said. The plane was enroute 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, NBC news reported. 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 two children among those taken to the hospital. The passengers were 37 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russians, 6 Kazakh citizens, and 3 Kyrgyz citizens, citing the Kazakh Ministry of Transport, Russian news agency Sputnik reported. The Embraer 190 aircraft made an emergency landing approximately 1.8 miles away from the city of Aktau, according to Azerbaijan Airlines. The investigation is ongoing and additional information regarding the incident will be provided, Azerbaijan Airlines said in a statement. 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.