The Kazakh government says there is currently no official explanation for the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that killed 38 people yesterday.
Four sources told the Reuters news agency today that the plane was downed by a Russian air defence system
The Kazakh vice premier said the government can neither confirm nor deny that this was the case.
Azerbaijan ‘expects Russian side to confess’ to plane shooting
We have some more detail to bring you now from Reuters news agency, who reported the Azerbaijan Airlines flight that crashed yesterday was downed by Russian air defences (see 13.30 post).
The plane had been headed for Grozny, in the south Russian region of Chechnya, from Baku, but crashed in Aktau, a city in western Kazakhstan.
As you can tell from this map, the passenger jet flew hundreds of miles off its scheduled route.
One of the four Azerbaijani sources familiar with the investigation told Reuters preliminary results show the plane was struck by a Russian Pantsir-S air defence system.
Its communications were also paralysed by electronic warfare systems on the approach into Grozny, it’s claimed.
“No one claims that it was done on purpose,” the source added.
“However, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to confess to the shooting down of the Azerbaijani aircraft.”
Russia’s Chechnya region in the south has been targeted by Ukrainian drones this month, with Russian air defences activated in response.
Officials did not explain why the plane had crossed the sea, but the nearest Russian airport on the plane’s flight path had been closed on Wednesday morning.
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