ASTANA, Feb 5 — An Azerbaijani passenger plane that crashed in December after being diverted from Russia to Kazakhstan had suffered external damage and was riddled with holes in its fuselage, according to a report published on a Kazakh government website today.
Thirty-eight people were killed when the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane crashed on December 25 near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after re-routing across the Caspian Sea from southern Russia.
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev said in December the plane had been damaged by accidental shooting from the ground in Russia. Moscow has not confirmed this.
Following the crash, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a rare apology to Aliyev for the "tragic incident" in Russian airspace, but the Kremlin did not say Russia had fired at the plane, only noting that a criminal case had been opened.
The preliminary report was issued under global aviation rules designed to draw lessons to prevent future accidents, rather than assigning blame or liability.
It was cautiously worded and did not say what had caused the extensive damage to the plane, including its stabilisers, hydraulics and trim systems.
But it included photographs showing the port side of the tail section was punctured with numerous holes. Also pictured were fragments that it described as "foreign metal objects" removed from the left stabiliser and hydraulic system.
A senior Azerbaijani government official told Reuters that the external impact referred to in the report was from a Russian surface-to-air missile.
"The Azerbaijani side possesses a fragment of a Pantsir-S missile, which was extracted from the aircraft and identified through international expertise," the source said.
It was the first time that a Baku government source has claimed to have physical proof that Russia shot down theplane, a Brazilian-manufactured Embraer E190. No comment was immediately available from Russian officials late on Tuesday evening.
Russia says it has assigned its own investigation to the most experienced experts and that actions are being taken to establish the cause and circumstances of the incident.
The plane had been flying from Baku to Grozny in southern Russia, where the Kremlin said Ukrainian drones had been attacking several cities at the time.
Twenty-nine people survived the crash-landing in Kazakhstan. Aliyev has hailed the pilots, who died, as national heroes. The Azerbaijani leader has said that blame lies with Russian individuals, and that Baku demands justice.
— Reuters
