Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accuses Russia of accidentally shooting down a passenger plane last week, killing 38 people. He claims Russia initially tried to cover up the incident by blaming bird strikes or gas cylinder explosions.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday that a passenger plane that crashed last week, killing 38 people, had been damaged by accidental shooting from the ground in Russia, adding that some in Russia had lied about the cause of the disaster. Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to Aliyev on Saturday for Wednesday’s “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving Azerbaijan Airlines Flight J2-8243 after Russian air defences engaged Ukrainian attack drones.
A Kremlin statement did not say Russia had shot down the plane, only noting that a criminal case had been opened. “Our plane was shot down by accident,” Aliyev said on state television on Sunday, adding that the plane had come under some sort of electronic jamming and had then been shot at while it was approaching the southern Russian city of Grozny. The pilots, who died in the crash, have been lauded in Azerbaijan for a landing that allowed 29 people to survive. Workers remove the coffins of victims of the Azerbaijani Airlines crash from a plane upon its arrival at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport outside Baku.“Unfortunately, in the first three days we heard only absurd versions from Russia,” Aliyev said, citing statements in Russia that attributed the crash to a bird strike or the explosion of some sort of gas cylinder. “We witnessed clear attempts to cover up the matter,” said the Azerbaijani leader, who has close ties to Russia and was educated at one of Moscow’s top universities. Aliyev said he wanted Russia to accept it was guilty of downing the plane and to punish those responsible.Putin and Aliyev held another telephone call on Sunday, the Kremlin said. It gave no details but on Saturday it said that both civilian and military specialists were being questioned about what had taken place. Rescuers work under the wreckage of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed near the airport of the city of Aktau in Kazakhsta
AIRPLANE CRASH RUSSIA AZERBAIJAN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS COVER-UP
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