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AZAL Plane Was Not Downed on Purpose Over Russian Territory - Aliyev

BAKU (Sputnik) - Azerbaijan Airlines' (AZAL) Embraer 190 passenger plane was not shot down in Russia's airspace on purpose, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday.

"The plane was not shot down over Russian territory on purpose," Aliyev said in an interview with Azerbaijani TV channel Aztv.

The president said that the fact that the plane's fuselage had holes in it ruled out collision with a flock of birds as a possible cause of the air disaster. The plane's tail section was badly damaged by what Aliyev said were shots fired from the ground.

"The truth behind what happened will be known once the black boxes are opened... The facts are that the Azerbaijani civil aircraft sustained external damage while it was flying over the Russian territory, near the city of Grozny," Aliyev said, adding the plane was likely affected by electronic warfare systems.

The president stressed that Russia needed to punish those responsible for the crash and pay compensation to the Azerbaijani government, the victims and the plane's crew. He confirmed that Russia had already apologized for the accident.

An Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 plane flying from Baku to Russia’s Grozny crashed on the morning of December 25 near the city of Aktau in western Kazakhstan. The airline said 62 passengers and five crew members were on board. Kazakhstan's emergencies ministry said 29 people survived the crash.

According to Russian aviation authority head Dmitry Yadrov, at the time the plane was preparing to land, Ukraine was carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure of Grozny in the Chechen Republic and Vladikavkaz in the Republic of North Ossetia using unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defenses were repelling those attacks.