At least 38 people have died after an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane crashed near the Kazakhstan city of Aktau.
The plane with 62 passengers and five crew members on board crashed on Wednesday after it was forced to make an emergency landing about three kilometres (1.8 miles) from Aktau.
“The situation is not very good, 38 dead,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev as saying.
The Embraer 190 aircraft was en route from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus.
Azerbaijan’s prosecutor general’s office earlier said 32 of the 67 people on board had survived.
“We cannot disclose any investigation results at this time. All possible scenarios are being examined, and the necessary expert analyses are underway,” it said in a statement.
“An investigative team, led by the deputy prosecutor general of Azerbaijan, has been dispatched to Kazakhstan and is working at the crash site.”
Azerbaijan Airlines said it was suspending all its flights from Baku to Russia’s Chechnya region until the investigation is concluded, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
“According to preliminary reports, the plane requested landing at an alternative airport before the accident … due to heavy fog in Grozny,” Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova reported from Moscow.
Passengers on the plane included citizens from Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Shapovalova added.
The airline has set up a hotline for family members of the passengers.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said in a statement that preliminary information suggested the pilots decided to make an emergency landing after a bird strike. Aktau is on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan and Russia.
Authorities in Kazakhstan said a government commission will investigate the crash and its members have been ordered to fly to the site and ensure that the families of the dead and injured were getting the help they needed.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev cut short a visit to Russia where he was due to attend a summit on Wednesday.
“We deeply sympathise with those who lost their relatives and friends in this plane crash and wish a speedy recovery to all those who managed to survive,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, also expressed his condolences in a statement.
