Two passengers and one crew member on the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan told Reuters that they heard at least one loud bang as it approached its original destination of Grozny in southern Russia.

An Azerbaijani minister suggested Friday that an airliner that crashed this week was hit by a weapon, citing expert analysis and survivor testimony indicating that the plane was struck from the outside.

Russians who reviewed the transcript of the crew's conversations from the Baku-Grozny flight themselves admit that the air crash was caused by their air defense systems (ADS), according to Andriy Kovalenko,

An investigation into the deadly crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight in Kazakhstan earlier this week came after the passenger plane experienced “physical and technical external interference,” the carrier said Friday.

Footage shows survivors walking and being dragged away from the tail section of a crashed Azerbaijan Airlines plane. Wednesday's flight from Baku to Grozny in the Russian republic of Chechnya was diverted across the Caspian Sea and went down near the western Kazakhstan city of Aktau.

The plane, which crashed in Kazakhstan this week, went down “due to external physical and technical interference,” according to the investigation’s preliminary findings.

Move came after evidence suggested Azerbaijani aircraft was downed by Russian air defence systems on Wednesday

Thirty-eight of 67 onboard flight from Baku to the Chechen city Grozny believed to have been killed. Russian authorities cite bird strike.

Azebaijan Airlines (AZAL) has decided to cancel flights to seven Russian cities after its aircraft failed to land in Grozny and crashed in Aktau, Kazakhstan. Source: The Moscow Times with reference to APA Details: From 28 December 2024,