Moscow also rejects Russian anti-aircraft thesis. Azerbaijan in mourning
Azerbaijan today observes a day of national mourning for yesterday’s plane crash in Kazakhstan, where an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 crashed with 67 people on board, 38 of whom died and 29 miraculously survived – including three children , all hospitalized – because the rear part of the aircraft separated from the rest of the nacelle before the latter caught fire.
In Astana, the Kazakh authorities have opened an investigation, while the hypothesis is gaining ground among some military experts that the plane, which had taken off from Baku headed for Grozny, the capital of the Russian Caucasian republic of Chechnya, was hit by Russian anti-aircraft right in Chechnya. A hypothesis which, according to the opinion of many experts on social media, would be supported by the numerous holes of various sizes visible on the rear segment of the fuselage, which remained substantially intact, which suggest splinters from an explosion.
The Kazakh government has denounced these speculations as premature, and even the Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, when questioned about it, responded that “it would be wrong to speculate on the causes of the plane crash in Kazakhstan until the investigations are concluded”.
