Russia-bound Azerbaijan Airlines plane carrying over 70 passengers crashes near Kazakhstan’s Aktau

Six passengers survived while dozens were feared dead after a plane carrying over 70 people crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, reports said on Wednesday, citing Kazakh Emergencies Ministry. The plane reportedly crashed near the Aktau airport.

The Azerbaijan Airlines plane was en route from Baku to Grozny in Russia’s Chechnya but was rerouted due to fog in Grozny, Russian news agencies said, adding that the aircraft had been rerouted due to fog at its scheduled destination.

Six passengers survived in the plane crash, Kazakhstan authorities said. A confirmation on the number of fatalities was awaited.

Purported visuals, claimed to be of the crash, surfaced on social media, showing an aircraft crashing to the ground and turning into a fireball.

Other visuals showed first responders near the broken remains of the plane, seemingly trying to retrieve survivors.

Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 with flight number 8243 was carrying 72 people, including crew members, the carrier said, adding that it had been forced to make an emergency landing approximately 3 km (1.8 miles) from the Kazakh city of Aktau.

Authorities in Kazakhstan said the cause of the incident, including a possible technical problem, was being ascertained.

Kazakhstan’s emergencies ministry later said that fire services had put out the fire that broke out after the crash and that survivors were being treated at a nearby hospital.

In another recent deadly plane crash, 10 people died on Sunday after a small aircraft crashed into a Brazilian town that’s popular with tourists. The 10 deceased were passengers and crew on board.

More than a dozen people on the ground were injured in the incident, Brazil’s Civil Defence Agency said.

The agency in a post on X said the plane hit the chimney of a home and then the second floor of a building before crashing into a mobile phone shop in a largely residential neighbourhood of Gramado. More than a dozen people who were on the ground were taken to hospitals with injuries including smoke inhalation, with two said to be in critical condition.

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash.

Local media reported that the passengers were members of the same family and were travelling to Sao Paulo state from another town in Rio Grande do Sul state.