New Delhi:
Twenty-eight individuals survived the preliminary affect of a plane crash in Kazakhstan’s Aqtau city, information company AFP mentioned Wednesday afternoon. Twenty-two individuals, together with a 11-year-old woman and a 16-year-old teen, have been hospitalised. Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Emergencies mentioned 39 died. The airplane – an Azerbaijan Airways jet carrying 62 passengers and 5 crew – was flying from Baku to Russia’s Grozny.
Fog on the vacation spot prompted it to be re-routed to Aqtau, which is round 1800 km away. Nevertheless, because the airplane approached Aqtau Worldwide Airport an (as but) unspecified disaster triggered an emergency touchdown request. Tragically the plane, an Embraer ERJ-190, by no means made it that far.
Preliminary experiences counsel the airplane was hit by a flock of birds, inflicting a potential steering malfunction and/or damaging one engine. The pilots tried to regain velocity and altitude however the controls failed.
It crashed round three km from the airport; horrific movies on social media picked up the airplane in a nosedive, shedding altitude quickly, slamming into the bottom, and bursting into flames.
READ | Azerbaijani Plane Requested Emergency Landing Before Crashing
The Kazakh Transport Ministry mentioned 37 of the airplane’s passengers have been from Azerbaijan, six have been from Kazakhstan, three have been from Kyrgyzstan, and 16 have been from Russia.
Among the many many movies being shared on-line is one which zooms in on the clearly-struggling airplane; within the video, posted by BNO Information Stay, the airplane seems to jerk up and down mid-air a couple of occasions, and even appeared to regain management momentarily, gaining altitude, earlier than all of it went horribly fallacious.
Within the 36 seconds of the two-and-a-half minute video the airplane goes right into a steep dive, tilting to its proper because it hits the bottom, bursts into flames, and breaks into items.
This video reveals what occurred within the minutes earlier than the airplane crash in Kazakhstan. The airplane repeatedly went up and down earlier than crashing. pic.twitter.com/dQ0H1c9R0R
— BNO Information Stay (@BNODesk) December 25, 2024
The airplane’s course on on-line flight monitoring web site Flight Radar confirmed it crossing the Caspian Sea, veering from its regular route after which circling over the realm the place it will definitely crashed.
Photos from the crash website revealed a horrific scene – items of the fuselage and tail have been scattered throughout a distant and dusty subject distinguished by a dust street zig-zagging by way of it.
A video shared by Kazakh’s ORDA information company confirmed some survivors being helped out from underneath the wreckage; one shot confirmed an aged man stumbling away with blood on his head, whereas one other confirmed a younger lady in a white coat wandering across the wreckage in obvious shock.
In the identical video a younger boy – his jacket stained with blood and grime – is helped by an emergency companies personnel. In the meantime, within the distance the opposite half of the airplane might be seen, nonetheless burning.
The airplane exploded right into a ball of fireplace because it hit the bottom, and that blaze saved burning for some time after the affect. Kazakh emergency personnel lastly managed to place out the fireplace.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev reduce brief a go to to Russia, the place he was as a result of attend an off-the-cuff summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Unbiased States, a grouping of former Soviet nations.
Azerbaijan’s First Woman Mehriban Aliyeva, who can also be the nation’s first Vice President, mentioned she was “deeply saddened by the information of the tragic lack of lives within the airplane crash close to Aktau”.
With enter from companies
NDTV is now out there on WhatsApp channels. Click on the link to get all the most recent updates from NDTV in your chat.