Azerbaijan Airlines Christmas Day plane crash survivor 'felt explosion close to leg'
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A young woman survivor on the plane ‘hit by a Russian missile’ told how she felt an explosion close to her leg. On Christmas day, Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crash landed some 280 miles from the reported strike after the captain told ground control he had lost full control of his Embraer 190 with 67 on board.
It is believed a Pantsir-S air defence system was fired as Ukrainian drones were targeting Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, where the aircraft was due to land. Reports indicate a blast close to the plane as it sought to land for the third time in Grozny.
There is evidence of shrapnel inside the plane’s cabin. “I don't know, something exploded near my leg,” the woman passenger, named as Jerova Salihat, told a TV interviewer from her hospital bed. I don't know what exploded. I don't know how it happened either.”.
She said of the pilot: “He thought he was going to land, but he didn't land, [and there was an] explosion when he went up”. The initial reason for three aborted landings was fog in Grozny. The woman is the latest of the 29 survivors of the flight from hell to speak about an explosion.
Surviving cabin crew reported hearing "three explosions outside the aircraft" while over Grozny. One of the flight attendants, Zulfugar Asadov, has told how he was hit in the arm by shrapnel, and needed to be bandaged. The plane eventually crash landed after coming out of a nosedive in Aktau, Kazakhstan, after the captain considered but rejected landing in the Caspian Sea.
