By admin 
(AP) – An Azerbaijani plane with 67 people on board crashed Wednesday in the Kazakh city of Aktau, leaving at least 32 survivors, officials said. More than thirty people were probably killed.
The Kazakh Emergency Situations Ministry said in a Telegram statement that five crew members were on board. At least 29 people have been hospitalized, the ministry told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
Russian news agency Interfax quoted medical workers as saying that four bodies had been recovered and emergency workers on the scene said that both pilots were killed in the crash, according to a preliminary assessment.
The Embraer 190 plane made an emergency landing 3 km from the city, Azerbaijan Airlines said earlier.
Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry initially said 25 people had survived the crash, but later revised that number to 27, 28 and then 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the crash site, lowering the presumed death toll.
The Attorney General’s Office in Azerbaijan later reported that at least 32 people survived the crash, adding that the number was not final.
The number of survivors could mean that more than 30 people are killed.
The plane was originally scheduled to fly from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus. According to Azerbaijan Airlines, 37 passengers were Azerbaijani nationals. There were also 16 Russian nationals, six Kazakhstani and three Kyrgyz nationals, the report said.
RIA Novosti quoted Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia as saying preliminary information showed the pilot had chosen to divert to Aktau after a bird strike on the plane led to “an onboard emergency.”
Cell phone footage circulating online showed the plane making a steep descent before hitting the ground in a fireball. Other images showed part of the fuselage torn away from the wings and the rest of the plane lying upside down in the grass. The images matched the colors of the aircraft and its registration number.
Some videos posted on social media showed survivors dragging fellow passengers from the plane’s wreckage.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed the aircraft making what appeared to be a figure to the right as it approached Aktau Airport, with its altitude moving up and down significantly during the final minutes of the flight before hitting the ground.
FlightRadar24 said separately in an online post that the plane had experienced “strong GPS interference” that caused “the aircraft to send poor ADS-B data,” referring to the information that allows flight tracking websites to track aircraft in flight to follow. Russia has been blamed in the past for disrupting GPS transmissions in the wider region.
Embraer did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Wednesday morning. In a statement, Azerbaijan Airlines said it would keep the public informed and changed its social media banners to solid black.
Azerbaijan’s state news agency Azertac said an official delegation consisting of the Minister of Azerbaijani Emergency Situations, the country’s Deputy Attorney General and the Vice President of Azerbaijan Airlines had been sent to Aktau to conduct an “on-the-spot investigation” to feed.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who had traveled to St. Petersburg, returned to Azerbaijan when he heard news of the crash, the president’s press service said. Aliyev was due to attend an informal meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc of former Soviet countries created after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Aliyev expressed his condolences to the families of the victims in a statement on social media. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery for the injured,” he wrote.
Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Aliyev on the phone and offered his condolences, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Both Kazakh and Azerbaijani authorities investigated the crash. Embraer told The Associated Press in a statement that the company “stands ready to assist all relevant authorities.”