12 killed, 53 hurt in Kazakh plane crash

Almaty, December 27

Twelve people died when a plane carrying 100 passengers and crew crashed shortly after take-off in Kazakhstan today. Many onboard survived without serious injury.

The 23-year-old plane operated by budget carrier Bek Air was torn apart and its nose crushed on impact with a building that partially collapsed, a video released by the Central Asian country’s emergencies committee showed. The aircraft disappeared from the radar minutes after it took off from Almaty airport at 7.05 am (01:05 GMT) on its way to the capital Nur-Sultan with 95 passengers and five crew members aboard, the airport authority said in a statement.

It hit a concrete barrier and then slammed into an uninhabited two-storey house near the city’s boundary northeast of the airport. Kazakhstan responded to the crash by grounding the Fokker model, which makes up the whole of the Bek Air fleet, and launched an investigation.

The health ministry said 53 people had been injured, nine of them children, adding that 10 of the adults were in critical condition.

Most onboard were Kazakhs but the injured also included citizens of China, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine.

Roman Sklyar, Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, said the plane’s tail had touched the runway twice during take-off. “Either this is a pilot error, or there were technical reasons,” Sklyar said at a press conference in Almaty.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev pledged to provide families of the victims with compensation and tweeted that those responsible “will be severely punished in accordance with the law.” — AFP