A passenger plane flying from Azerbaijan to Russia has crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, the Central Asian country’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said in a statement.
Flight number J2-8243, an Embraer 190 aircraft with 62 passengers and five crew members on board, was forced to make an emergency landing about 3km (1.8 miles) from Aktau.
Twenty-eight people, including two children, survived the crash and were hospitalised, according to health officials. Russian news agency Interfax cited the ministry as saying that there may be more survivors and quoted medical workers at the scene as saying that four bodies have been recovered.
The Emergencies Ministry said fire services had put out the blaze. It said 150 emergency workers were at the scene.
“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.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said in a statement that preliminary information suggested the pilot had 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 had been set up to investigate what had happened and its members 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 has cut short a visit to Russia – where he was due to attend a summit on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev was forced to leave St Petersburg (where he had a summit). Putin has already called him and expressed his condolences in connection with the crash of the Azerbaijani plane in Aktau,” the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
“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.”
Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya, expressed his condolences in a statement and said those hospitalised were in an extremely serious condition and that he and others would pray for their rapid recovery.
Authorities in Kazakhstan said they had begun looking into different possible versions of what had happened, including a technical problem, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported. (Al Jazeera’)