The United States has blamed Russia for the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash that killed 38 people on Christmas Day.
According to BBC, the White House spokesman John Kirby has said in the "early indications" the US has seen that Russia may have been responsible for Azerbaijan’s plane crash in Kazakhstan on December 25, 2024.
Without revealing any further details, the spokesperson told reporters that the US has offered its assistance in the investigation of the crash.
Moreover, Azerbaijan, without naming any specific country, claimed that the plane crashed due to “external interference.”
Azerbaijan's transport minister Rashad Nabiyev said, “All (the survivors) without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,” adding that the investigators will now examine “what kind of weapon, or rather what kind of rocket was used."
He revealed that the plane was subjected to “interference, which damaged it inside out, when it tried to land in Russia's southern republic of Chechnya.
Furthermore, flight attendant Zulfuqar Asadov, while describing the moment when the plane was hit by “some kind of external strike" over Chechnya, said, “The impact of it caused panic inside. We tried to calm them down, to get them seated. At that moment, there was another strike, and my arm was injured."
Meanwhile, Russia has refused to comment on the plane crash-related accusations, and the head of the civil aviation agency said that Chechnya was "very complicated" because of Ukrainian drone strikes on the region.
