A total of 38 people died when an Azerbaijani aircraft crashed in Kazakhstan, Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Qanat Aldabergenuly Bozymbaev said on Wednesday.

Azerbaijan Airlines, the carrier of the passenger jet that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, said preliminary investigations have found the disaster occurred “as a result of physical and technical external interference,

Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was scheduled to travel from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, a city in the Russian region of Chechnya, on Wednesday, but was diverted and ultimately crashed on the other side of the Caspian Sea, less than two miles from the airport in Aktau, Kazakhstan.

Azerbaijan is in mourning on Friday following the devastating crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 passenger plane near Aktau, Kazakhstan. The crash, which occurred on the morning of December 25,

Vladimir Putin has apologised for the Azerbaijan Airlines crash but stopped short of accepting responsibility for what he described as a “tragic incident”.

In the crash’s aftermath, Azerbaijan has unleashed rare and stinging criticism of Russia, with the country’s president saying Moscow’s response has caused “surprise, regret and rightful indignation.”

The extraction of flight data from the Brazilian-made Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan last month was completed at a lab run by Brazil's air force, according to a statement released by the entity on Monday.

"The blame for this disaster lies with representatives of the Russian Federation," Ilham Aliyev said on Jan. 6.