Canada said Thursday it was deeply concerned about reports that Russian air defense could have struck the Azerbaijan The airline flight that crashed on Wednesday called on Moscow to allow an open and transparent investigation into the incident.
“Canada is deeply concerned by reports that Russian air defense forces may have fired a missile at Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243, causing it to crash land,” the Canadian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on x.
“We appeal Russia enable an open and transparent investigation into the incident and accept its findings,” the ministry said.
Four sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan’s investigation into the disaster told Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defenses had shot down an Azerbaijan Airlines plane. who crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.
Flight J2-8243 crashed in a fireball near the town of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday after diverting from an area in southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defense systems against Ukrainian drone strikes.
The Embraer jetliner had flown from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny in Russia’s southern Chechnya region before traveling hundreds of kilometers across the Caspian Sea.
It crashed on the opposite shore of the Caspian after what Russia’s aviation watchdog said was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird collision.
Authorities have not said why it crossed the sea. The closest Russian airport in the plane’s flight path, Makhachkala, was closed Wednesday morning.
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One of the Azerbaijani sources close to Azerbaijan’s investigation into the crash told Reuters that preliminary results showed the plane was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S air defense system. Its communications were paralyzed by electronic warfare systems as it approached Grozny, the source said.
“No one is saying this was done on purpose. However, taking into account the established facts, Baku expects the Russian side to confess to shooting down the Azerbaijani plane,” the source said.
Three other sources confirmed that the Azerbaijani investigation had reached the same preliminary conclusion. The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
A U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday that there were preliminary indications that a Russian anti-aircraft system may have hit the plane.
Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Qanat Bozymbaev said he could neither confirm nor deny the theory that Russian air defenses shot down the plane.
Asked whether Russian air defenses had fired on the plane, the Kazakh transport prosecutor for the region where the plane crashed said the investigation had not yet concluded.
The Kremlin, asked before the Reuters report about the suggestion that the plane was targeted by fire from Russian air defenses, said it would be inappropriate to comment until the investigation was complete.
“It is wrong to build hypotheses before the conclusions of the investigation,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Footage taken by passengers on the plane before it crashed showed oxygen masks pulled down and people wearing life jackets. Later footage showed bloodied and bruised passengers exiting the plane. There were 29 survivors.
Photos of the plane wreckage showed what appeared to be shrapnel damage to the plane’s tail.
Aviation security company Osprey Flight Solutions said in an alert to airlines on Wednesday that images of the wreckage and circumstances around airspace in southwest Russia indicated the possibility that the airliner was hit by some form of anti-aircraft fire.
Ukrainian military drones have repeatedly targeted Russia’s southern regions in recent months, triggering Russian air defenses. Russia and Ukraine have been at war since Moscow’s decision. invasion from its neighbor in February 2022.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported the downing of 59 Ukrainian drones over several regions.
Some were reportedly shot down in closed airspace over Ukraine’s border regions, including the Sea of Azov. Flight operations were reportedly temporarily suspended at Russia’s Kazan airport due to this activity.
Additionally, publicly available ADS-B flight tracking data shows that the Azerbaijani aircraft suffered GPS jamming throughout its flight over southwest Russia, the alert said.
Russia uses advanced electronic jamming equipment to confuse the tracking and communications systems of Ukrainian drones and a large number of air defense systems have been deployed to shoot down the drones.