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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Kremlin urges caution amid speculation over Kazakhstan plane crash

Emergency specialists work at the crash site of an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet near the western Kazakh city of Aktau on Dec. 25, 2024.  (Issa Tazhenbayev/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS)
By German Press Agency</p><p>

MOSCOW – Following the crash of a passenger plane in Kazakhstan, Moscow is cautioning against speculation that the aircraft may have been shot down, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.

“An investigation is currently under way; every incident in aviation must be investigated by specialized aviation authorities,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Russian state-run TASS news agency. “It would be wrong to hypothesize before the conclusions of the investigation are available.”

The cause of Wednesday’s Azerbaijan Airlines crash, which left 29 survivors, several of them seriously injured, remains unclear.

Various theories have been put forward, including the possibility that the aircraft was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile, based on unusual damage observed on the plane’s fuselage.

The Embraer 190 commercial aircraft, was en route from Baku to Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, with 67 people aboard, including five crew members.

For reasons still unknown, the plane veered toward the Caspian Sea before crashing near Aktau, Kazakhstan, shortly before its landing approach.