A passenger on the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in a Kazakh coastal city on Wednesday told Reuters that there was at least one loud explosion as the plane approached the city of Grozny in southern Russia. The incident killed 38 of the 67 people on board, the agency notes, reports BTA.
“I thought the plane was going to fall apart“, said Subhonkul Rakhimov, one of the passengers who survived the crash, stressing that he had prepared for the worst.
Rakhimov said that after the loud explosion, the plane began to move strangely.
Four sources familiar with the preliminary results of the Azerbaijani authorities' investigation into the crash told Reuters on Wednesday that Russian air defenses mistakenly shot down the aircraft.
The Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed on Wednesday while traveling from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus. It deviated from its course and attempted an emergency landing 3 kilometers from the Kazakh port city of Aktau, located on the Caspian Sea, the airline said.