Azerbaijan Airlines plane 'shot down by Russian air defences' as 38 killed

Experts have said that the Azerbaijan Airlines flight which crashed near to Aktau in Kazakhstan may have been hit by Russian air defence systems. At least 38 people are known to have died on the flight, and Azerbaijan has held a national mourning the deceased.

The plane had originally been flying on a relatively short journey between Baku in Azerbaijan and the Russian city of Grozny, but was diverted due to fog.

The front part of the plane was destroyed in the incident, however part of the rear fuselage survived the impact. Experts have suggested that markings on the aircraft indicate that it was hit by a surface to air missile, and not by a bird strike.

Justin Crump works for risk advisory company Sibylline, and analysed images of the damage inside and outside the aircraft. He told BBC Radio 4: "It looks very much like the detonation of an air defence missile to the rear and to the left of the aircraft, if you look at the pattern of shrapnel that we see."

Azerbaijan state-run AnewZ channel said on Thursday that a preliminary investigation into the crash concluded that the plane was hit by shrapnel. Azerbaijan Airlines has said that the plane was fully services, and had not had any technical malfunctions. The manufacturer, Brazilian firm Embraer, has a strong safety record.

Dramatic video footage shows survivors crawling out of the plane's wreckage. Russia has rejected claims that the plane was hit by a missile.

Kazakhstan has reportedly refused both Russia and Azerbaijan permission to participate in the investigations into the crash. A member of the Kazakhstan investigation commission claimed this was to ensure the investigation could be properly carried out, saying: “This way we will have all the facts, the black box and the evidence."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC: "It would be wrong to put forward any hypotheses before the investigation's conclusions. We, of course, will not do this, and no-one should do this. We need to wait until the investigation is completed."

Addressing claims that the plane was hit by birds, which can be sucked into a plane's engine causing it damage, aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia explained that when this happens planes usually glide to the nearest airfield. However, on this flight the pilots were unable to do this.

"You can lose control of the plane, but you don't fly wildly off course as a consequence," he told Reuters. Kazakh authorities have now recovered flight data and an investigation is underway into the tragedy.