15 killed, 66 hurt in Kazakhstan aeroplane crash

ALMATY, Dec 27, 2019, AP. At least 15 people died on Friday when a passenger plane carrying 98 people crashed into a house shortly after take-off from Kazakhstan’s largest city, authorities said. The Bek Air plane “fell off the radar” minutes after it took off from Almaty airport at 7.05am local time on its way to the capital, Nur-Sultan, the airport authority said in a statement, South China Morning Post reported.

“There are 14 dead at the [crash] site,” the city government said in a statement sent from its Telegram messenger app.

It added that a further 17 patients were being treated in hospital in a “serious condition”, including at least eight children. It is thought that at least 66 passengers survived the crash.

A video, released by the Central Asian country’s emergencies committee, showed the front of the plane crushed into a house that was partially collapsed, as rescue crews worked to pull people from the wreckage.

Rescuers could be seen reaching into the windows of the shattered cockpit, as scores of emergency staff gathered at the site.

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

Tokayev also said that a government commission had been set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

In March, a Bek Air Fokker-100 plane with 116 passengers made an emergency landing at the capital’s international airport after its landing gear failed to deploy. None of the passengers or five-member crew were injured.

Kazakhstan’s industry ministry said in a statement on Friday that the Fokker-100 model would be grounded until the cause of the accident became clear.

The company manufacturing the aircraft went bankrupt in 1996 and the production of the Fokker-100 stopped the following year.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

Tags: Kazakhstan