Wednesday’s Embraer E190 crash in Kazakhstan may have been caused by a Russian air-defense system, Reuters reported Thursday.
The Azerbaijan Airlines passenger flight was bound for Grozny Airport on Christmas Day when it diverted due to poor weather. It later declared an emergency and crashed near Aktau Airport in Kazakhstan, killing at least 38 of the 62 passengers aboard.
Four unnamed sources with knowledge of the preliminary investigation for the crash told Reuters that Russian air defenses shot down the plane. One of those sources said the aircraft was struck by a Russian Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile system.
“No one claims that it was done on purpose,” the source told Reuters. “However, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to confess to the shooting down of the Azerbaijani aircraft.”
The Kremlin reportedly said that an investigation into the matter was ongoing and it would be improper to comment before reaching its own conclusions.
The Azerbaijan Airlines crash comes a little over a decade after Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine territory controlled by Russian and Russian-led forces, killing all 298 people aboard.
According to a news release by the U.S. Department of State commemorating the 10th anniversary of the incident, a joint investigation team found in 2018 that the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made BUK surface-to-air missile fired from the territory. The release stated the missile originated from the 53rd Anti-aircraft Brigade of the Russian Federation.
AirlineGeeks reached out to Azerbaijan Airlines for comment.
