It is a day of mourning for the victims of the plane crash in Azerbaijan. Could Russia have damaged the plane? – National
Azerbaijan marked a national day of mourning Thursday for the victims of a plane crash that killed 38 people and injured all 29 survivors, with some experts saying the plane was damaged by Russian air defense forces. fire.
The “Embraer 190” plane of “Azerbaijan Airlines” CJSC was going in this direction Azerbaijan On Wednesday, it diverted for unknown reasons after flying east over the Caspian Sea to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus, capital of Baku, and crashed while trying to land in the Kazakh city of Aktau.
The plane landed about 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) from Aktau. Cellphone footage circulating online shows the plane making a steep descent before crashing into the ground in a ball of flames. Other images showed part of its body torn from the wings and the rest lying upside down in the grass.
As the official crash investigation began, theories abounded about the possible cause, with some experts claiming that visible holes in the plane’s tail indicated it may have been fired by Russian air defense systems that repelled a Ukrainian drone attack.
Ukrainian drones have previously attacked Grozny, the provincial capital of Russia’s Chechen Republic, and other parts of the country’s North Caucasus. A Chechen official said that another drone attack on the region was prevented on Wednesday, although the federal authorities did not report it.
On Thursday, national flags were lowered all over Azerbaijan, traffic was stopped across the country at noon, signals were sounded from ships and trains in connection with the nationwide minute of silence.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said it was too early to speculate on the cause of the crash, but he said weather conditions forced the plane to change its planned route.
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“According to the information given to me, the plane changed its direction between Baku and Grozny due to the deterioration of weather conditions and moved towards Aktau airport and crashed during landing.
Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia said that according to preliminary information, the pilots headed for Aktau after an emergency situation occurred on the plane due to a bird strike.
According to Kazakhstan officials, 42 citizens of Azerbaijan, 16 citizens of Russia, 6 citizens of Kazakhstan and 3 citizens of Kyrgyzstan were on board the plane. The Russian Emergencies Ministry sent 9 surviving Russians to Moscow for treatment on Thursday.
Mark Zee of OPSGroup, which monitors the world’s airspace and airports for risk, said an analysis of footage of the wreckage showed it was likely hit by a surface-to-air missile, or SAM.
“There is more to investigate, but at a high level we would put the probability of this being a SAM attack on the aircraft in the 90-99% bracket,” he said.
The aviation security company “Osprey Flight Solutions” based in Great Britain has warned its customers about the “possibility of the plane belonging to Azerbaijan Airlines being shot down by the Russian military air defense system.” Osprey provides an analysis of carriers still flying to Russia after Western airlines suspended flights during the war.
Osprey CEO Andrew Nicholson said the company had issued more than 200 warnings about drone attacks and air defense systems in Russia during the war.
“This event reminds us why we do what we do,” Nicholson wrote online. “Despite our best efforts, it is painful to know that people are being lost in ways that could have been prevented.”
Azerbaijan’s Caliber news site claimed that the plane was shot down by Russia’s Pantsir-S air defense system while approaching Grozny. He questioned why Russian authorities failed to close the airport despite an apparent drone raid in the region. The head of Chechnya’s Security Council, Hamzat Kadyrov, said on Wednesday that air defense forces shot down drones attacking the region.
Caliber also asked why Russian authorities did not allow an emergency landing at Grozny or other nearby Russian airports after the plane was shot down.
Asked about allegations that the plane was shot down by air defenses, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “it would be wrong to speculate before the investigators make a verdict.”
Speaker of the Parliament of Kazakhstan, Maulen Ashimbayev, also called the claims about air defense fire groundless and “unethical” and warned not to rush to conclusions based on the pictures of the fragments of the plane.
Other officials of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan similarly avoided commenting on the possible cause of the accident, saying that it would be determined by investigators.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
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