Haunting final words of flight attendant on doomed passenger plane ‘shot down by Russian missile’ over Kazakhstan on Christmas Day
These are the heartbreaking last words of a flight attendant on board the doomed Azerbaijan Airlines plane that was reportedly shot down by a Russian missile on Christmas Day.
Chief flight attendant Hokuma Aliyeva has been praised for valiantly comforting passengers while pilot Captain Igor Kshnyakin and co-pilot Aleksandr Kalyaninov desperately tried to save the plane after it was struck over Chechnya, Russia.
The pilots bravely flew Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8432 out of Russian airspace and into Kazakhstan before it crashed.
Meanwhile, the flight attendant’s voice could be heard over the tannoy while she attempted to calm the passengers.
In one clip, the flight attendant could be heard telling those onboard: ‘Everything will be fine’, as passengers look around the aircraft in distress.
It has now been confirmed that Aliyeva was among the 38 of the 67 on board who died.
Aliyeva’s family have since paid tribute to the ‘cheerful’ flight attendant, adding that ‘she always told us to be proud of her’.
It comes after Azerbaijan today said that it had found ‘external interference’ was responsible for the fatal crash amid a preliminary investigation and claims Russia downed the plane with a surface-to-air missile before trying to cover it up.
Fllight attendant Hokuma Aliyeva died in the Azerbaijan Airlines crash on Christmas Day
It has now been confirmed that Aliyeva was among the 38 of the 67 on board who died
This is the horrific moment a passenger plane hit the ground in a fireball in a Christmas Day crash landing
‘Based on the opinion of experts and on the words of eyewitnesses, it can be concluded that there was external interference,’ Azerbaijani’s transport minister, Rashad Nabiyev, told reporters.
‘It is necessary to find out from what kind of weapon,’ he added, citing reports from survivors of hearing ‘three explosions’ as the plane was over Grozny.
The development in the tragic story of Wednesday’s crash, which killed 38, came as a flight attendant on the stricken plane revealed he sustained a shrapnel wound as explosions outside rocked the doomed flight near Russia.
Crash survivor Zulfugar Asadov gave an extraordinary account of the flight, which crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, killing 38.
Mr Asadov – who was convinced he had died in the crash – said that he was ‘cut on the arm by an impact that occurred outside the plane’ after the plane aborted its attempts to land in Grozny, Russia, citing poor weather.
‘I grabbed a towel, bandaged my arm tightly, and [colleague] Aydan [Ragimli] helped me,’ he said. ‘We continued the flight.’
The flight attendant revealed that the pilot had sought to make an emergency landing in the Caspian ‘because the aircraft’s engine was malfunctioning’, but changed his mind and carried on towards Kazakhstan, fearing for the safety of passengers.
He spoke amid chilling accusations that Russia mistakenly targeted the plane with a surface-to-air missile, and then sought to block it from landing on its territory in the expectation it would sink in the Caspian Sea.
Rescuers are pictured crawling into the plane wreck to look for survivors
People are seen standing next to the rear of the crashed passenger jet
Footage of the crash showed the plane bursting into flames as it hit the ground and thick black smoke then rising
Emergency services are pictured above at the scene of the plane crash
Evidence had began piling up that Russian air defences hit the Azerbaijan Airlines plane, which was likely wrongly targeted as a suspected Ukrainian drone.
The apparent shrapnel damage to the aircraft – seen on the intact rear section of the doomed aircraft at Aktau in Kazakhstan – is consistent with such a strike. So are the accounts of surviving passengers who spoke of an explosion outside the plane.
Footage from the crash site shows rescuers looking for survivors inside the Azerbaijan airlines flight from Baku to the Russian city of Grozny, which crashed with 67 passengers and five crew members on board.
There was mayhem as rescuers went inside the severed rear of the aircraft, where several people can be seen lying on the ground. Astonishingly, some were found still alive.
One trapped woman shouted at rescuers: ‘Help me please!’. A firefighter asked her whether she needed help to get up, and she confirmed that she would need to be lifted out of the debris.
One terrifying video shows the moment the plane burst into flames and broke into several parts as it hit the ground, with thick black smoke rising up from the wrecked aircraft after.
Later bloodied and bruised passengers could be seen stumbling from a piece of the fuselage that had remained intact.
Azerbaijan Airlines, the country’s flag carrier, said the Embraer 190 had ‘made an emergency landing’ around three kilometres from Aktau, an oil and gas hub on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea.
‘A plane doing the Baku-Grozny route crashed near the city of Aktau. It belongs to Azerbaijan Airlines,’ the Kazakh ministry said on Telegram.
The Embraer E190AR with registration number 4K-AZ65 sent out a distress signal at an altitude of 2,125 feet over the Caspian Sea.
Ahead of the crash, the crew had reported a strong impact on the hull. They assumed the aircraft hit a flock of birds.
Authorities in Kazakhstan said they had begun looking into different possible versions of what had happened, including a technical problem, Russia ‘s Interfax news agency reported.
