The crash of a flight carrying a Russian man in Aktau, Azerbaijan, reported to the state broadcaster Azertac

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who had been traveling to St Petersburg, returned to Azerbaijan on hearing news of the crash, the president’s press service said. The Commonwealth of Independent States, a group of former soviet countries, was founded after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Aliyev sent his sympathies to the families of the victims in a statement. He wrote, “It is with deep sadness, that I convey my sympathies to the families of the victims and wish a swift recovery to those injured.”

The authorities were investigating the crash. Embraer told The Associated Press in a statement that the company is “ready to assist all relevant authorities.”

Azerbaijan’s state news agency, Azertac, said that an official delegation consisting of Azerbaijan’s emergency situations minister, the country’s deputy general prosecutor, and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines had been dispatched to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation”.

Early Wednesday morning, Embraer did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the airline said it would change its social media banners to black and keep members up to date.

FlightRadar24 separately said in an online post that the aircraft had faced “strong GPS jamming” which ” made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data”, referring to the information that allows flight-tracking websites to follow planes in flight. Russia is blamed for jamming gps transmissions in the past.

Flight-tracking data from FlightRadar24.com showed the aircraft making what appeared to be a figure-right once nearing the airport in Aktau, its altitude moving up and down substantially over the last minutes of the flight before impacting the ground.

RIA Novosti quoted Russia’s civil aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, as saying that preliminary information showed that the pilot had chosen to divert to Aktau after a bird strike on the aircraft led to “an emergency situation on board”.

At least 32 survivors were left in the crash of a plane in Aktau, according to officials. More than 30 people are likely dead.

According to the Emergency Ministry, there were 25 people who survived the crash and 27 who died as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash.

Russian news agency Interfax quoted medical workers as saying that four bodies have been recovered and emergency workers at the scene as saying that both pilots, according to a preliminary assessment, died in the crash.

Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry said in a Telegram statement that those on board included five crew. At least 29 have been hospitalized, the ministry told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti.

The crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 on Wednesday in the North Caucasus: Evidence for a Surface-to-Air Missile Attack

Azerbaijan on Thursday observed a nationwide day of mourning for the victims of the plane crash that killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured as speculation mounted about a possible cause of the disaster, with some experts saying that the airliner was damaged by Russian air defense fire.

Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons yet unclear and crashed while making an attempt to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan after flying east across the Caspian Sea.

There are theories that claim that the plane came under Russian air defense systems attack, with some suggesting that there were holes in the tail section.

Caliber, an Azerbaijani news website, claimed that the airliner was fired upon by a Russian Pantsyr-S air defense system as it was approaching Grozny. It wondered how Russian authorities could not close the airport despite the apparent missile attack on it. Khamzat Kadyrov, head of Chechnya’s Security Council, said that air defenses downed drones attacking the region on Wednesday.

On Thursday, national flags were lowered across Azerbaijan, traffic across the country stopped at noon, and signals sounded from ships and trains as the country observed a nationwide moment of silence.

Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that it was too soon to speculate on the reasons behind the crash, but said that the weather had forced the plane to change from its planned course.

Mark Zee of OPSGroup, which monitors the world’s airspace and airports for risks, said that the analysis of the images of fragments of the crashed plane indicate that it was almost certainly hit by a surface-to-air missile, or SAM.

“Much more to investigate, but at high level we’d put the probability of it being a SAM attack on the aircraft at being well into the 90-99% bracket,” he said.

More than 200 warnings about air defense systems and drone attacks were issued by the company, Andrew Nicholson said.

Nicholson wrote online that the incident was a stark reminder of why they do what they do. “It’s hard to believe that lives could have been spared even though we did our best,” he said.

Kazakhstan’s parliamentary Speaker Maulen Ashimbayev also warned against rushing to conclusions based on pictures of the plane’s fragments, describing the allegations of air defense fire as unfounded and “unethical.”

Other officials in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have similarly avoided comment on a possible cause of the crash, saying it will be up to investigators to determine it.