Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed near Aktau, killing 38 of 67 passengers. Baku accuses Moscow of shooting the plane; investigations are ongoing. Survivor Rinat Assanov faces six months of treatment after the crash.
“I heard a loud explosion, the oxygen masks fell down and the plane shook,” Rinat Assanov told AFP, recalling the moment the Azerbaijan Airlines plane he was on ran into trouble over southern Russia. The plane, flying from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to Grozny in Russia’s Chechnya, crashed hundreds of kilometres to the east, near the Kazakh city of Aktau, killing 38 of the 67 passengers on board. Azerbaijan has publicly said the plane was shot by Russian air defences – a theory backed by independent analysts.
Moscow said its air defence systems were operating in the area at the time but has not admitted shooting the plane, triggering a rare diplomatic feud with Moscow..
