Missile strike suspected in deadly plane crash in Kazakhstan
The preliminary report on the crash of an Azerbaijani passenger plane, which went down in December in Kazakhstan, indicates damage "possibly by external objects."
The document, published on Kazakhstan's government website, describes numerous damages to the fuselage, tail, and right engine of the aircraft but does not provide a definitive cause of the crash.
Dozens of holes in the fuselage
The report, which is 53 pages long, indicates further "investigations and expert analyses" are needed to determine the nature and origin of the damages. Meanwhile, Reuters, citing a source within the Azerbaijani government, reported that the aircraft was hit by a Pantsir-S surface-to-air missile defense system.
"The Azerbaijani side possesses a fragment of the Pantsir-S missile, which was extracted from the aircraft and identified through international expert analysis," the source stated.
The crash occurred on December 25, 2024, in the city of Aktau, Kazakhstan, resulting in the deaths of 38 people. The Azerbaijan Airlines plane was flying from Baku to Grozny in Chechnya. On board were 16 Russians, as well as several citizens of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, with the majority of passengers being citizens of Azerbaijan.
Putin apologized right after the crash
The black boxes of the Embraer-190 plane were sent to Brazil, where they were analyzed with the participation of Azerbaijani, Russian, and Kazakh experts, and then handed over to Kazakhstan. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stated on December 29 that the plane was damaged due to accidental firing from Russian territory during an attack by Ukrainian drones on facilities in Chechnya.
Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, apologized in a phone conversation with Aliyev for the "tragic incident" involving the Azerbaijani plane, although the Kremlin did not directly admit that a Russian missile hit the Embraer-190.
