12 Killed, Dozens Hurt After Plane Crashes in Kazakhstan

Source: Time Magazine:

December 27, 2019 at 11:22

In this handout photo provided by the Emergency Situations Ministry of the Republic of Kazakhstan, police and rescuers work on the side of a plane crash near Almaty International Airport on Dec. 27, 2019. AP

Video footage showed the front of the broken-up fuselage rammed against a building and the rear of the plane lying in the field next to the airport.

(ALMATY, Kazakhstan) — A plane with 98 people aboard crashed shortly after takeoff early Friday in Kazakhstan, killing at least 12 people, Kazakh officials said. There were 54 people hospitalized with injuries, at least 10 of them in critical condition.

The cause of the crash in the Central Asian nation was unclear, but authorities were looking at whether pilot error or technical failure were factors, Kazakhstan’s deputy prime minister Roman Sklyar said.

The Bek Air aircraft hit a concrete fence and a two-story building after takeoff from Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city and former capital. It lost attitude at 7:22 a.m. (0122 GMT), the Almaty International Airport said. Sklyar said the plane’s tail hit the runway twice during takeoff, indicating that it struggled to take off.

One survivor said that the plane started shaking less than two minutes after takeoff.

“At first the left wing jolted really hard, then the right. The plane continued to gain altitude, shaking quite severely, and then went down,” Aslan Nazaraliyev, one of the passengers who survived the crash, told The Associated Press by phone.

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