What do we know about the disaster of “Azerbaijan Airlines”.

On December 25, 38 people died as a result of an emergency landing in Kazakhstan of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight that was supposed to land in Russia.

The circumstances of the crash remain unclear, but limited evidence suggests it may have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air defense system as it attempted to land in Chechnya.

Here’s what we know about flight J2-8243.

Early on Christmas morning, flight J2-8243 took off from the airport of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. It was connected to the landing in Grozny, the capital of the Russian region of Chechnya.

There were 67 passengers on board, most of whom were citizens of Azerbaijan, as well as Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

It was an Embraer 190 of the Azerbaijan Airlines airline.

As the flight approached Grozny, it entered thick fog, the surviving passengers said.

They describe how the pilot tried to land the plane twice in these conditions.

According to survivors, on the third attempt, they felt a series of explosions hit the plane.

“For the third time, something exploded… part of the plane’s skin broke off,” one of them told Russian television.

A flight attendant on the plane, Zulfukar Asadav, told local media that the strike “caused panic inside.”

“We (passengers) tried to calm down and put them down. At that moment there was another blow, my arm was damaged,” he said.

In a video taken by a passenger on the flight, oxygen masks can be seen hanging from the ceiling.

Azerbaijan’s Transport Minister Rashad Nabiyev said: “All without exception (survivors) said they heard three explosions when the plane was over Grozny.”

He said the plane was hit by “external interference” when it tried to land and was damaged internally and externally.

In recent weeks, Ukraine has carried out drone strikes in Chechnya and other parts of the Russian Caucasus.

After the disaster, the authorities in Moscow said that such attacks had prompted a protocol to close the airspace over Grozny.

According to local officials, an anti-aircraft drone was shot down that morning over a shopping center in Vladikavkaz, in neighboring North Ossetia.

It is unclear whether the closed airspace protocol – known as the “carpet plan” – was adopted before or while flight J2-8243 was in Russian airspace.

After the incident over Grozny, the plane headed about 450 km (280 miles) east to Aktau Airport in Kazakhstan.

It remains unclear why it was diverted over the Caspian Sea – a much longer route than several other options.

Russian aviation authorities claim that the plane’s pilots were “offered other airports” but chose Oktau.

Data released by flight-tracking website Flight Radar showed the plane zigzagging up and down as it approached Aktau before turning around and making an emergency landing a few kilometers from the airport.

Video taken near the scene shows the plane rapidly descending through the air before crashing into the ground and plunging several hundred meters into flames.

38 people died, 29 survived, some were seriously injured. Remarkably, some survivors were seen walking and crawling out of the wreckage of the plane.

The plane’s pilots are credited with saving lives by managing to land part of the plane despite being killed in the crash themselves.

Most of the survivors are believed to have been seated in the back.

According to the first reports of the Russian media, the plane collided with a flock of birds.

However, aviation experts and other Azerbaijani experts believe that the plane’s GPS systems were damaged by electronic jamming, and then it was damaged by shrapnel from Russian anti-aircraft missile blasts.

On Friday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the US had “early indications” of Russian responsibility, but declined to comment further.

The Azerbaijani government has so far avoided direct accusations against Russia, but sources in the Azerbaijani government told Reuters that the investigation had already identified the weapon fired during the flight as the Russian Panzer-S anti-aircraft system.

The Kremlin still refuses to comment on the information that the plane was shot down by Russian weapons.

“An investigation is underway, and until conclusions are drawn based on the results of the investigation, we do not consider ourselves entitled to make any assessments,” said press secretary Dmitriy Piaskov.

The flight recorders of the plane have been found, which contain data that can determine the cause of the crash.

Reports in Baku indicate that both Russia and Kazakhstan have proposed that a committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a regional organization dominated by Russia, investigate the disaster, but Azerbaijan has demanded an international investigation instead.

In connection with the disaster, “Azerbaijan Airlines” and several other airlines suspended flights to some Russian cities.