Azerbaijan observed on Thursday a day of national mourning for the victims of that plane crash he killed 38 people and left 29 wounded as speculation had arisen about a possible cause of the accident.
An Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan's capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it derailed for reasons that were not yet clear and crashed in crash while trying to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan after flying east over the Caspian Sea.
The plane went down about 2 miles from Aktau. Mobile phone footage circulating online appeared to show the plane descending steeply before crashing into the ground in a fireball. Other pictures showed part of its fuselage torn away from the wings and the rest of the plane lying upside down in the grass.
On Thursday, national flags were lowered across Azerbaijan, traffic stopped across the country at noon and signals were sounded from ships and trains as the country observed a period of silence across the country.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said it was too early to speculate on the reasons behind the crash but said the weather had forced the plane to deviate from its intended course. look at him.
“The information given to me is that the plane changed its course between Baku and Grozny due to the worsening weather and went to Aktau airport, where it happened when he landed,” he said.
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Russia's civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said preliminary information indicated that the pilots moved to Aktau after a bird strike caused an emergency on board.
As the official accident investigation began, there were many theories about a possible cause, with some commentators suggesting that holes seen in the tail section of the plane may have indicated that it may have come under fire from Russian air defense systems that intercepted a Ukrainian drone attack.
Ukrainian drones had previously attacked Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, and other regions in the country's North Caucasus. Some Russian media reported another drone attack in Chechnya on Wednesday, although it was not officially confirmed.
Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security company based in the United Kingdom, warned its clients that the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was likely shot down by a Russian air defense system.” Osprey provides an analysis of passengers still flying into Russia after Western airlines temporarily suspended flights the war in Ukraine.
The CEO of Osprey, Andrew Nicholson, said that the company had issued more than 200 calls regarding drone attacks and air defense systems in Russia during the war.
“This event is a great reminder of why we do what we do,” Nicholson wrote online. “It hurts to know that, despite our efforts, a life was lost in a way that could have been avoided. “
Russian military expert Yury Podolyaka told Agence France-Presse that the holes seen in the plane's wreckage were similar to those left by an “anti-aircraft missile system”. “Everything points to that,” he wrote.
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And Gerard Legauffre, a former expert at France's BEA air crash investigation agency, also said there appeared to be “a lot of shrapnel” in the wreckage, according to AFP.
It showed as a “souvenir” on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was downed by a surface-to-air missile by Russian-backed rebels over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
But when asked about the claims that the plane was shot down by air defense assets, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “It would be wrong to make assumptions before investigators make their judgments .”
Kazakhstan Parliament Speaker Maulen Ashimbayev also warned against jumping to conclusions based on photos of the plane's wreckage, describing the allegations of air defense fire as baseless and “unethical “.
Other officials in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have also declined to comment on a possible cause of the crash, saying it will be up to investigators to find out.
