Azerbaijan Airlines' Embraer 190 aircraft that crashed in Aktau, western Kazakhstan, could have suffered a drone attack, Haqqin.az publication said.
"A drone may have attacked the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft in Russia," the publication said.
The pilots may have not even noticed the attack. The actual reason that caused the air crash will only be announced after the analysis of flight recorders of the aircraft.
A surviving passenger of the crashed aircraft announced a few details of the accident. The 48-year-old man named only as Subkhonkul said that he heard an explosion, probably from outside the plane.
"There was an explosion — I wouldn't say that it was inside the plane. Where I was sitting, the fuselage skin next to me came off," he noted in a conversation with RT, adding that a fragment pierced the life jacket underneath his seat.
The man said that he was flying from Yekaterinburg to Grozny with a transfer in Baku. According to the victim, the Embraer airliner tried to land two or three times near the capital of Chechnya. The passengers heard a bang, and the aircraft changed its course.
The man also recalled that the oxygen masks that fell out had almost no oxygen in them. The man moved to the back seat and tried another mask.
According to the man, all the passengers that were sitting near him survived. The man himself was not injured at all — he only suffered from severe headaches.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared December 26 a day of mourning throughout the country following the plane crash.
Thirty-eight people were killed in the Aktau plane crash. Twenty-nine were hospitalized, including three children. Eleven people are in serious condition. There were 67 people on board.