BAKU: Azerbaijan Airlines said on Friday it was suspending flights to seven Russian cities after one of its Russia-bound jets veered off course and crashed in western Kazakhstan on Wednesday. The airline said it was "taking into account the initial results of the investigation into the crash... and taking into account flight safety risks", after reports that investigators had found the plane could have been shot down by a Russian air defence missile.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said on Friday that it would not comment on the deadly crash of an Azerbaijani passenger plane until an inquiry was completed, after reports the jet was targeted by a Russian air defence missile. The Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau, an oil and gas hub, on Wednesday after going off course for undetermined reasons. Thirty-eight of the 67 people on board died. "An investigation is underway, and until the conclusions of the investigation, we do not consider we have the right to make any comments and we will not do so," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
The head of Russia's civil aviation agency said on Friday that Ukrainian drones were attacking the city of Grozny as an Azerbaijani Airlines plane was trying to land there, before it later crashed in Kazakhstan. Dmitry Yadrov also said on Telegram that there was heavy fog over Grozny when the incident occurred on Wednesday and "conditions that day and in those hours around the airport were very complicated".
"Ukrainian military drones were carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure... at the time," Yadrov said, adding that the plane made two unsuccessful attempts to land. "The pilot was offered alternative airports. He took the decision to go to Aktau airport" in Kazakhstan, he said. Yadrov also said that Grozny airport had suspended arrivals and departures because of the Ukrainian drone attacks, though without specifying when this happened.
The Embraer 190 aircraft was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Grozny in Chechnya, southern Russia, but instead diverted far off course across the Caspian Sea.
An investigation is underway, with the pro-government Azerbaijani website Caliber citing unnamed officials as saying they believed a Russian missile fired from a Pantsir-S air defence system downed the plane. — AFP
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