Dozens were feared dead on Wednesday after a passenger plane carrying 67 people from Azerbaijan to Russia accident in Kazakhstan, authorities said.
There were 62 passengers and five crew members on board the Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which crashed near Aktau, a city in southwestern Kazakhstan, in a post on Telegram. The Kazakh Ministry of Health later published a list of 29 survivors, 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.
Emergency specialists work at the scene of the accident.
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 Grozny airport press service told Russia's Tass state news agency.
The Embraer 190 plane made an emergency landing about 1.8 miles away from the city of Aktau, according to a statement published on Telegram by Azerbaijan Airlines.
A preliminary investigation found that the plane collided with birds and was diverted to Aktau due to an emergency on board, according to a statement published on Telegram by the Russian aviation authority, Rosaviatsia.
The investigation is ongoing and additional information about the incident will be provided, Azerbaijan Airlines said in a statement published on Telegram.
There was a fire at the scene of the accident but it was completely extinguished, the Kazakh Ministry of Emergencies said.
They said 150 personnel and 45 units of equipment were involved in the emergency response.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said 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 we wish the survivors a speedy recovery,” Peskov said, adding that Aliyev was able had left St. Petersburg where he was to attend a summit.
Aliyev declared December 26 a national day of mourning in Azerbaijan.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov expressed his condolences to the families of the dead passengers in a post on his Telegram account on Wednesday morning.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
