A passenger plane carrying 67 people from Azerbaijan to southern Russia crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau on Wednesday, local authorities said.

Several passenger plane crashes have occurred worldwide this year, including a Wednesday morning Azerbaijan Airlines wreck that has left dozens feared dead.

Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 had flown hundreds of miles off its scheduled route from Azerbaijan to Russia to crash on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. A Kazakh official said 38 people had been killed,

An Embraer passenger jet crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, killing 38 people, after diverting from an area of Russia that Moscow has recently defended against Ukrainian drone attacks.

Azerbaijan Airlines suspended all its flights from Baku to Russia's Chechnya until the investigation is finished, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported. An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed in the Kazakhstani city of Aktau, killing at least 38 people, authorities have said.

An Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash on Christmas Day has prompted speculation the plane was shot down by Russia after it took a detour of hundreds of miles in the wrong direction and crash-landed with holes in the fuselage.

The Azerbaijani Airlines plane that crashed on Dec. 25 en route to Russia may have been shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile, according to reports from independent Russian media outlets. The aircraft,

Russia damaged an Azerbaijani passenger plane using a surface-to-air missile system, causing it to crash in Kazakhstan, stated the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine,