Aviation experts said on Thursday that the Russian air defense fire likely was responsible for the accident of the Azerbaijani plane the day before, which killed 38 people and left the 29 survivors injured.
The Embraer 190 of Azerbaijan Airlines was heading from the capital Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons that are still unclear and crashed while attempting to land in Aktau, Kazakhstan, after flying east across the Caspian Sea.
The plane crashed about 3 kilometers (approximately 2 miles) from Aktau. Images taken with cell phones circulating on the internet appeared to show the aircraft descending sharply before crashing into the ground in a ball of fire.
Other images showed part of its fuselage without the wings and the rest of the aircraft lying upside down on the grass.
What are the authorities in Azerbaijan saying about the plane crash?
Azerbaijan observed a national day of mourning on Thursday for the victims of the accident, and lowered the national flags to half-mast throughout the country. Traffic stopped at noon, and ships and trains sounded their alarms during a minute of silence.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, said it was too early to speculate on the reasons for the accident, but also mentioned that the weather had forced the plane to change its planned route.
"The information provided to me is that the plane changed its course between Baku and Grozny due to worsening weather conditions and headed to Aktau airport, where it crashed upon landing," he stated.
The Russian civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, explained that preliminary information indicated that the pilots diverted to Aktau after a bird strike caused an onboard emergency.
What other explanations could exist for this airplane accident?
As the official investigation into the accident began, some experts claimed that the holes observed in the tail section of the plane could indicate that it was attacked by Russian anti-aircraft defense systems repelling an attack from a Ukrainian drone.
Ukrainian drones had previously attacked Grozny, the provincial capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, and other regions in the North Caucasus of the country. An official in Chechnya said that another drone attack in the region was repelled on Wednesday, although federal authorities did not report it.
Mark Zee from OPSGroup, which monitors the airspace and airports around the world for risks, said that the analysis of the images of the fragments of the crashed plane indicates that it was most likely hit by a surface-to-air missile, or SAM. "Much more to investigate, but at a high level we would put the probability of it being a SAM attack on the plane in the 90-99% range," he said.
Osprey Flight Solutions, an aviation security firm based in the United Kingdom, warned its clients that the "Azerbaijan Airlines flight was likely shot down by a Russian military anti-aircraft defense system." Osprey provides analysis to airlines that are still flying to Russia after Western airlines halted their flights due to the war.
Yan Matveyev, an independent Russian military expert, pointed out that the images of the tail section of the crashed plane reveal damage consistent with shrapnel from small surface-to-air missiles, such as the Pantsyr-S1 air defense system.
Caliber, an Azerbaijani news website, claimed that the airliner was attacked by a Russian Pantsyr-S air defense system as it approached Grozny. It questioned why the Russian authorities did not close the airport despite the apparent drone attack in the area.
When asked about claims that the plane had been attacked by air defense assets, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “it would be incorrect to make hypotheses before investigators issue their verdict.”