New Delhi:
A harrowing video taken by a passenger inside the cabin of a plane that crashed in Kazakhstan was shared widely on social media today, showing the doomed plane’s final moments. Thirty-eight people were killed in the crash near Aktau, an oil and gas hub on the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea.
In the video, passengers can be heard saying “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) as the plane nosedives. Yellow oxygen masks were seen hanging above the seats. Screams and cries could be heard over the soft sound of a doorbell with a “fasten your seatbelts” lamp.
The plane was flying from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on the west coast of the Caspian Sea, to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia. Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said the plane made an “emergency landing” about 3 kilometers from Aktau.
Another video taken on board the plane showed the plane’s ceiling panel containing reading lights and blowers turned upside down and people screaming for help. The video was apparently taken after the plane crashed.
The last moments of an Azerbaijani plane before it crashed in Kazakhstan were filmed by a passenger on board.
The footage also includes the aftermath. pic.twitter.com/nCRozjdoUY
— Crash Report (@clashreport) December 25, 2024
Blood stains were visible on some of the armrests.
Azerbaijani authorities say 32 people survived the crash of an Embraer 190 narrow-body airliner.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev declared a day of national mourning on Thursday and canceled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a group of former Soviet states.
Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said its staff had extinguished the fire that broke out when the plane crashed. The Ministry of Health announced that a special flight with specialized doctors was being dispatched from Kazakhstan’s capital Astana to treat the injured.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Aliyev by phone and “expressed his condolences in connection with the crash,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news conference.
Putin later said at the opening of the CIS leadership meeting in St. Petersburg that Russia’s Emergencies Ministry had been sent to Aktau with medical personnel and other equipment.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said in a telegram: “I express my condolences to the relatives of the passengers who died on the Azerbaijan Airlines plane.”
Flight radar showed the plane’s path deviated from its normal route, crossing the Caspian Sea and eventually circling over the area where it crashed.
Kazakhstan said it had launched an investigation.
With information from AFP
