PASSENGER JET SHOT DOWN? Suspicious traces found on the fuselage of the ill-fated aircraft After the crash of a passenger plane in Kazakhstan, investigations into the cause of the accident have begun. Rescue teams recovered the flight recorders, also known as the black box, from the wreckage of the plane at the scene of the accident near Aktau on the coast of the Caspian Sea in the evening. According to official figures, 38 people were killed when the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan, and 29 passengers survived, some of them seriously injured. It is completely unclear why the plane crashed. There are several unconfirmed speculations about the causes: from bird strikes to fire from Russian anti-aircraft guns. Kazakhstan's deputy prime minister Qanat Aldabergenuly Bosymbayev has now called for no hasty conclusions to be drawn. The results of the investigations will "of course" be published once the work is complete. The plane took off on Wednesday morning from the Azerbaijani capital Baku with 67 passengers - including five crew members. It was scheduled to fly to Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya. For reasons still unknown, the plane headed towards the Caspian Sea shortly before landing. According to the Kazakh agency Tengrinews, the pilot signaled an emergency - known in pilot circles as "emergency squawk 7700". Why did the plane not fly to its destination airport? The plane was unable to land in Grozny due to bad weather conditions and therefore headed for an alternative airport, said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Many videos of the accident were circulating on social networks, he said. "But the reasons for the crash are still unknown to us." There are various theories. "The matter must be thoroughly investigated," he said, according to the state news agency Azertag. In initial statements, Azerbaijan Airlines attributed the alleged damage to the aircraft to a possible collision with a flock of birds. Aviation expert Heinrich Großbongardt, however, believes that fog or a flock of birds are unlikely to have caused the crash. "The realistic scenario is an external influence," he told ARD's "Tagesschau". "The aircraft was extremely badly damaged and uncontrollable. This is not something that would be caused by a flock of birds, for example, where the engines would fail but the aircraft would remain controllable." Is there a connection to the war in Ukraine? Russian military bloggers, however, have not ruled out another explanation: the aircraft could have entered zones over the North Caucasus where Ukrainian drones were being fought on Wednesday morning. However, there was no official statement on this from the Russian Ministry of Defense, which usually reports the fighting of incoming drones. In the Ukrainian capital Kiev, the head of the Center for Combating Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, expressed the view that the plane had been shot at and damaged by Russian air defenses on its way to Grozny. He did not provide any evidence for his claims. It was completely unclear whether drones or anti-drone missiles were involved in the incident at all. Ukraine has been defending itself against the Russian war of aggression for almost three years and has repeatedly targeted military targets in its neighboring country, primarily with drones. Ukrainian drones are now also reaching the Caucasus. The Internet aircraft tracker Flightradar24 analyzed that the damaged plane had been flying over the Caspian Sea for the last 74 minutes with only limited control. #kazakhstan #planecrash #worldnewschannel Subscribe to the WELT YouTube Channel / weltvideotv WELT DOKU Channel / weltdoku WELT Podcast Channel / weltpodcast WELT Netzreporter Channel / dienetzreporter The WELT news livestream http://bit.ly/2fwuMPg The top news on WELT.de http://bit.ly/2rQQD9Q The media library on WELT.de http://bit.ly/2Iydxv8 WELT news channel on Instagram / welt.nachrichtensender WELT on Instagram / welt On our own behalf: Due to the high volume of irrelevant and offensive posts, we are currently unable to accept any more comments. Thank you for your understanding - the WELT team created Video 2024