Azerbaijan declares December 26 day of mourning after plane crash

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared December 26 a day of mourning following a deadly crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane, TASS reported, citing local media.

An Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 passenger plane headed from Baku, Azerbaijan to Grozny, Russia crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau earlier on Wednesday. According to the latest reports, there were 69 people on board, including nationals of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.

According to the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office, at least 32 people survived, while the Kazakh Emergency Situations Ministry put the number of survivors at 29.