Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 had flown hundreds of miles off its scheduled route from Azerbaijan to Russia to crash on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. A Kazakh official said 38 people had been killed,

Mobile phone footage circulating online appeared to show the Azerbaijani Airlines plane making a steep descent before slamming into the ground in a fireball in western Kazakhstan.

Russia’s state aviation authority said the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had been trying to make an emergency landing. The Kazakh authorities said that at least 29 people survived.

The Azerbaijan Airlines flight from Baku to Grozny in Russia was carrying 67 people when it crashed near Aktau early Wednesday. 25 people survived, Kazakhstan's emergencies ministry said.

According to Kazakhstan's Transport Ministry, the plane operated by Azerbaijan Airlines had 37 Azerbaijani passengers, 16 Russians, six Kazakhs, and three Kyrgyz, along with five crew members on board.

Speculation has emerged that Russian air defenses may have played a role, with some questioning, "This doesn't seem like birds."

An Embraer passenger jet crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38 people, after diverting from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks.

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger aircraft crashed near Kazakhstan's Aktau Airport close to the Caspian Sea on Wednesday morning.

The Russian authorities are trying to conceal the fact of a drone attack on Chechnya. This attack may be connected to the crash of a passenger aircraft in Kazakhstan, according to Agentstvo.Novosti on Telegram.