A passenger plane flying from Azerbaijan to Russia has crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan killing four people, according to health officials and medical workers.
Flight number J2-8243, an Embraer 190 aircraft with 62 passengers and five crew members on board, was forced to make an emergency landing on Wednesday about 3km (1.8 miles) from Aktau.
Twenty-nine people, including two children, survived the crash and were hospitalised, according to the Central Asian country’s Emergency Ministry.
The ministry initially said 25 people survived the crash, later revising that number to 27, 28, and then 29 as the search and rescue operation continued at the site of the crash.
Russian news agency Interfax cited the ministry as saying that there may be more survivors and quoted medical workers at the scene as saying that four bodies have been recovered.
The ministry said fire services had put out the blaze. It said 150 emergency workers were at the scene.
“According to preliminary reports, the plane requested landing at an alternative airport before the accident … due to heavy fog in Grozny,” Al Jazeera’s Yulia Shapovalova reported from Moscow.
