MOSCOW — The Azerbaijani government has publicly made reference to a weapon used against the passenger plane that crashed earlier this week near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.
"The investigation will clarify what kind of weapon was used to cause the external impact," Transport Minister Rashad Nabiyev said on Friday, according to the Azerbaijani state news agency Azertag.
Nabiyev said that the wreckage and witness statements suggested that the aircraft had been damaged from the outside above the original destination airport in Grozny, the capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya.
"According to these (statements), there was an explosive noise outside and then the aircraft was hit by something," he said.
At the time the plane was damaged on Wednesday morning, Russian air defenses were reportedly engaged in combat with Ukrainian drones in the region.
Nabiyev did not specify who, according to government intelligence, had fired at the aircraft.
Several media outlets, citing unnamed Azerbaijani government sources, had previously reported that the crash was a result of a Russian anti-aircraft missile.
Spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, echoed these suspicions on Friday. "We have seen some early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air defense systems," the US official said.
Azerbaijan Airlines said the preliminary investigation results suggest the incident was caused by "physical and technical effects from outside."
Photos of the aircraft's tail section show damage that resembles the impact holes of shrapnel from anti-aircraft weapons.
Nabiyev also questioned why the plane attempted an emergency landing in Aktau, noting that it had flown over the airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan, following the damage.
Investigators would have to clarify whether an emergency landing had been authorized or denied in Makhachkala, he said, as well as why the aircraft's satellite position had been disrupted.
Neither the Kremlin nor Russia's aviation authority Rosaviatsiya commented on whether an anti-aircraft missile could have hit the plane, which was carrying 67 people on its way from Baku to Grozny.
The head of Rosaviatsiya, Dmitry Yadrov, said in a statement on Friday that the aircraft had been unable to land in Grozny for safety reasons.
"The situation that day and during those hours in the Grozny airport area was very complicated," Yadrov said.
"Ukrainian combat drones were carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Grozny and Vladikavkaz regions at that time," he said.
Yadrov said no departures and arrivals were permitted in Grozny due to the danger posed by the drones and that all pilots had to leave the airspace during the alert period.
He added that there was dense fog in Grozny at the time. The pilot of the aircraft had made two attempts to land without success before turning towards Kazakhstan, he said.
Rosaviatsiya is leading Russia's investigation into the incident.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Moscow was aware of statements made in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, which also included demands that Moscow apologize for the fact that the plane was hit by Russian air defenses and crashed as a result.
Peskov declined and reiterated that the results of the investigation should first be released.
"An investigation into this aircraft incident is under way. And until the conclusions of the investigation are available, we do not consider ourselves authorized to make any judgments — and will not do so," Peskov said.
Such results could only come from the Russian aviation authorities investigating the case, he said.
The head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, Andriy Yermak, also blamed Russia for the plane crash.
Moscow must be held responsible for the "shooting down" of the plane, he wrote on Telegram on Friday.
Kazakh and Azerbaijani authorities are conducting their own investigations into the cause of the crash.
The images and data available strongly suggest the plane was shot down by anti-aircraft fire, according to an expert on Ukraine for the Austrian Armed Forces.
Colonel Markus Reisner said on Austria's ORF radio that the aircraft was riddled with bullet-shaped shrapnel suggesting that a missile exploded in its immediate vicinity.
Reisner said he assumed the hit was unintentional, rather than targeted.
He said other explanations for the crash, such as a technical problem or bird strike, are unlikely, adding that the images available are "very compelling."
Former NATO general Hans-Lothar Domröse also told the German news portal Focus Online: "I consider an accidental launch by a Russian anti-aircraft missile to be the most likely scenario. It is possible that the aircraft appeared to the military as a danger in an already tense situation."
Due to the unclear situation in Grozny, Azerbaijan on Friday denied offers of help from Chechnya for victims of the crash, according to a media report.
"Neither the state nor its citizens will accept such help," the Azerbaijani news portal Day.az reported on Friday, citing an unnamed representative of Azerbaijan's presidential office.
The presidential office also said that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has spoken on the phone with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to thank him for providing professional rescue work and medical care to the victims.
Both presidents reportedly agreed that the cause of the crash would be revealed by the results of the ongoing investigations.
Azerbaijan Airlines is to suspend its connections to 10 Russian cities following the crash, the Azerbaijani news agency Turan reported on Friday.
From Saturday, there will no longer be flights from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to Sochi, Volgograd, Ufa, Samara, Mineralnye Vody, Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod, Vladikavkaz, Grozny and Makhachkala, it said.
It said the suspension is to continue until the cause of the crash has been fully investigated.
The Russian aviation authority earlier temporarily banned departures and arrivals at several airports in the country again for safety reasons. No details were given.
Airports in Russia frequently cease operations temporarily when air defences are deployed during Ukrainian drone attacks.
According to Azerbaijan Airlines, a plane returned to Baku on Friday because the airspace at the Russian destination airport, Mineralnye Vody in the North Caucasus, was closed.
Azerbaijan Airlines is reportedly to continue to fly to Moscow, St Petersburg, Kazan, Astrakhan, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk.
In Kazakhstan, the airline Qazaq Air has suspended flights from the capital Astana to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in the Urals for a month for safety reasons. However, flights to Omsk and Novosibirsk in Siberia will continue, it said.
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