World

BAKU — Azerbaijan said Monday that Moscow had promised to punish those responsible for the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that Baku says was shot at by Russian air defences.

The AZAL Embraer 190 jet crash-landed in Kazakhstan on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Moscow accept responsibility for mistakenly shooting the plane as it tried to make a scheduled landing at Grozny airport in south Russia.

Russia has not confirmed that one of its air-defence missiles hit the plane, though President Vladimir Putin told Aliyev in a phone call over the weekend that the systems were active at the time and that he was sorry the incident took place in Russian airspace.

Azerbaijan's General Prosecutor said in a statement Monday that the head of Russia's Investigative Committee had told Baku: "Intensive measures are being carried out to identify the guilty people and bring them to criminal responsibility."

Russia has opened a criminal inquiry into the incident but has not said whether it agrees that the plane was hit by one of its air-defence missiles, and has not said anything about finding or bringing any perpetrators to justice.

Aliyev had issued a rare forthright condemnation of Moscow, a close partner of Baku, on Sunday.

He said the plane was "hit by accident" but was angry that Russia had apparently tried to hide the cause of the crash.

Demanding that Putin admit responsibility, Aliyev also accused Russia of putting forward alternative theories that "clearly showed the Russian side wanted to cover up the issue". 

Russia said Grozny, in the southern Russian region of Chechnya, was being attacked by Ukrainian drones when the plane approached to make its landing through thick fog.

Survivors have described hearing explosions outside the plane, which then diverted more than 400 kilometres across the Caspian Sea towards the Kazakh city of Aktau, where it crash-landed.

PARIS — The deadly Boeing plane crash in South Korea which killed 179 people on board was initially blamed on a bird collision, a stark reminder of how such incidents are often the cause of aviation accidents around the world. 

Officials had initially cited a bird strike as a likely cause of Sunday's crash of the Jeju Air plane, though Seoul said Monday it was conducting a special inspection of all 101 Boeing 737-800s operating in South Korea.

Whatever the cause of Sunday's crash, aviation authorities around the world appear to be recording more bird collision incidents as air traffic grows. 

In the United States alone, 17,190 bird strikes were recorded in 2022, according to a database set up by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

That was up 10 percent on 2021's figure, in line with increased air traffic following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Collisions in the United States between wild animals and civil aircraft totalled 291,600 between 1990 and 2023, according to the same records. 

In mainland France, the Civil Aviation Authority records 600 each year during commercial flights, though serious incidents represent less than 8 percent of cases on average -- a downward trend in recent years.

Not including Sunday's crash, bird strikes have destroyed 250 aircraft worldwide since 1988, leaving 262 people dead, according to the Australian Aviation Wildlife Hazard Group. 

These collisions cause more than $1.2 billion in damage to aircraft each year, the Australian group says. 

They usually mostly occur during takeoffs and landings at fairly low altitudes, about15 metres. 

Higher altitude air collisions are much rarer but not impossible. 

In France, a tourist plane crashed in 2021 in the Seine-et-Marne department after hitting a cormorant in flight. 

One of the most famous cases occurred in January 2009, when the pilot of a US Airways Airbus A320 with 155 occupants kept his cool to land on the Hudson River in New York after a collision with a flock of wild geese. 

Serious cases 'extremely rare' 

"In most cases, hitting a bird does not lead to major accidents," said an expert who used to work at France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA), the country's authority in charge of investigations after civil aircraft accidents. 

Mostly, the damage is only material and is limited to bumps or a few impacts on the fuselage. 

But when one or more birds "enter an engine, the damage can be much more serious", especially if the compressor is damaged "which can cause a malfunction or the engine to stop", explained the ex-BEA expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. 

There could be "engine shutdown, precautionary landing, interrupted takeoff" or a return to the ground with delays, said the French Civil Aviation Authority, which could have "impacts on air safety or on the continuation of the flight". 

Such risks increase depending on the size of the birds and their number, particularly during the migratory period. 

Bird debris or aircraft parts damaged by the collision can also cause flames or a fire on the engine. 

"But normally it does not go as far as breaking the entire hydraulic and electrical system of the aircraft," said the expert -- naming the systems required to manoeuvre and to lower the landing gear, which failed to extend in the Jeju Air crash.

They added that if one engine fails, the second is supposed to take over. 

For both to stop, the collision would have to have occurred on both engines simultaneously, but "this is exceedingly rare", the expert said. 

To protect themselves against the risks linked to birds, aircraft manufacturers and airports have implemented a series of measures. 

These range from stress tests on engines by throwing dead chickens into them to cautionary measures around airports like broadcasting bird distress calls or preemptive shots in the air to scare them away. 

MOSCOW — Russia said Monday it had swapped 150 Ukrainian soldiers held captive for an equal number of Russian troops, in an exchange deal brokered by the United Arab Emirates.

"On 30 December, as a result of the negotiation process, 150 Russian servicemen were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In return, 150 Ukrainian army prisoners of war were handed over," the Russian defence ministry said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Russia is against the deployment of Western peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as part of any settlement to end the nearly three-year conflict, 

Talk of the possible stationing of foreign troops in Ukraine to enforce any peace deal is circulating in Western capitals, with French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussing the issue in a meeting in Warsaw this month.

In an interview published Monday by the Russian foreign ministry, Lavrov told the state-run TASS news agency that Moscow opposed that idea as well as others being proposed by US President-elect Donald Trump.

"Of course, we are not satisfied with the proposals being voiced by representatives of the president-elect to postpone Ukrainian NATO membership for 20 years and to send to Ukraine a peacekeeping contingent of 'British and European forces,'" Lavrov said.

The Kremlin had previously said it was "too early to talk about peacekeepers".

Trump, who comes to power in three weeks, has claimed he can strike a peace deal in 24 hours and said he will use Washington's multibillion-dollar financial and military support to Kyiv as leverage.

He has yet to propose a concrete plan but members of his team have floated various ideas, including the deployment of European troops to monitor any ceasefire along the 1,000-kilometre front line and a lengthy delay on Kyiv's ambitions to join the NATO military alliance.

Both the Russian and Ukrainian presidents have ruled out direct talks with each other, and positions in Kyiv and Moscow appear far apart on what would be acceptable terms for a peace deal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from four eastern and southern regions -- Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia -- that Russia claims to have annexed, while Kyiv has repeatedly ruled out ceding territory to Moscow in exchange for peace.

MUAN (SOUTH KOREA) — A Jeju Air plane carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea crashed on arrival Sunday, smashing into a barrier and bursting into flames, killing everyone aboard except for two flight attendants plucked from the wreckage.

A bird strike was cited by authorities as the likely cause of the crash, the worst ever aviation disaster on South Korean soil, which flung passengers out of the plane and left it "almost completely destroyed", according to fire officials.

Video showed the Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 landing on its belly at Muan International Airport, skidding off the runway as smoke streamed out from the engines, before crashing into a wall and exploding in flames.

"Of the 179 dead, 65 have been identified," the country's fire agency said, adding that DNA retrieval had begun.

Inside the airport terminal, tearful family members gathered to wait for news.

An official began calling out the names of the 65 victims who had been identified, with each name triggering fresh cries of grief from waiting relatives.

Only two people, both flight attendants, were rescued from the crash, the fire department said.

"Passengers were ejected from the aircraft after it collided with the wall, leaving little chance of survival," a local fire official told families at a briefing, according to a statement released by the fire brigade.

Both black boxes, the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, have been found, deputy transport minister Joo Jong-wan said at a briefing.

Under floodlights, rescue workers used a giant yellow crane to lift the burned-out fuselage of the orange-and-white aircraft on the runway at Muan , some 288 kilometres southwest of Seoul.

Bits of plane seats and luggage were strewn across the field next to the runway, not far from the charred tail, offering a glimpse into the catastrophic impact of the crash.

 'Sister went to heaven' 

All of the passengers were Korean apart from two Thais, with the youngest a three-year-old boy and the oldest a 78-year-old, authorities said.

"I had a son on board that plane," an elderly man waiting in the airport lounge, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

"My younger sister went to heaven today," a 65-year-old woman, who gave only her surname Jo, told AFP.

The two survivors were transferred to separate hospitals in Seoul, the Yonhap news agency reported.

"When I woke up, I had already been rescued," a 33-year-old flight attendant told doctors, according to Ju Woong who heads the Ewha Womans University Seoul Hospital.

He suffered multiple fractures, while the other crew member, a 25-year-old woman -, injured her ankle and head, Yonhap reported.

The accident took place in a matter of minutes as Jeju Air Flight 2216 tried to land, with the control tower issuing a warning of a bird strike, and the pilot soon after calling "mayday".

Video shows the plane coming off the tarmac and hitting a wall, but officials dismissed speculation that the length of the runway was a factor in the crash.

Lee Jeong-hyun, chief of Muan fire station, said the cause was "presumed to be a bird strike" but that the exact details would be announced after a full investigation.

National mourning 

Low-cost carrier Jeju Air said it "sincerely" apologised, with top officials shown bowing deeply at a press conference in Seoul, and vowed to do all it could to help.

Boeing said in a statement that it was in touch with Jeju Air and stood "ready to support them".

South Korea's acting President Choi Sang-mok, who only took office Friday, convened an emergency cabinet meeting and then visited the crash site at Muan.

The country declared a seven day national mourning period effective from Sunday, with memorial altars to be set up nationwide.

It is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of South Korea's largest low-cost carriers, which were set up in 2005.

On August 12, 2007, a Bombardier Q400 operated by Jeju Air carrying 74 passengers came off the runway due to strong winds at the southern Busan-Gimhae airport, resulting in a dozen injuries.

South Korea's aviation industry has a solid track record for safety, experts say.

A number of fatal aviation accidents have occurred globally due to bird strikes, which can cause a loss of power if the animals are sucked into the air intakes.

MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin admitted Saturday Russian air defence was working when an Azerbaijani Airlines plane tried to land in Grozny before crashing, breaking the Kremlin's silence as speculation mounted Russia may have accidentally shot the plane. 

The Russian leader called his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev, apologising the incident took place in Russian airspace, while stopping short of saying Russian air defence shot the plane. 

Baku, meanwhile, said Aliyev had "emphasised" to Putin that the plane was hit by outside interference over Russia, saying it wanted those responsible "held accountable." 

The phone call between the allies came three days after the Embraer 190 plane flying from Baku to Grozny crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people of 67 onboard. 

Western experts have pointed the finger at Russia; while the US said it had "early indications" the plane was shot. 

Putin told Aliyev the plane had tried to land in Grozny "several times." 

"During this time, Grozny, (the town of) Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian combat drones and Russian air defence was repelling these attacks," Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript. 

It added that: "Vladimir Putin had presented his apologies that the tragic incident happened in Russia's air space and again expressed his deep and genuine condolences to the families of the dead, wishing a quick recovery to those affected."

But Aliyev appeared in no doubt that the plane was shot at over Russia. 

"President Ilham Aliyev emphasised that the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane encountered external physical and technical interference while in Russian airspace, resulting in a complete loss of control," Baku's presidency said in a statement. 

It added Aliyev "highlighted that the multiple holes in the aircraft's fuselage, injuries sustained by passengers and crew due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight, and testimonies from surviving flight attendants and passengers confirm evidence of external physical and technical interference."

Survivors have told the media about hearing an "explosion" as the plane attempted to land. 

Aliyev's office said Baku wanted an investigation "ensuring those responsible are held accountable."

 'Stark reminder' of MH17 

Speculation has swirled for days, with the US weighing in Friday. 

Its White House spokesman John Kirby said Washington had "early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air defence systems."

Putin's phone call came after the Kremlin had earlier said it would be "inappropriate" to comment on the speculations. 

Moscow also said it will work with an investigation by Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. 

While some in Azerbaijan,  a Russian ally, have called for an apology from Moscow, Kazakhstan, one of Moscow's main allies, has not pointed the finger at Russia. 

Russian officials had earlier said that Ukrainian drones were attacking Grozny that day. 

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky said he also spoke to Aliyev on Saturday, saying the footage of the plane make it looks "very much like an air defence missile strike."

"The key priority now is a thorough investigation that will answer all questions about what really happened. Russia must provide clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation," Zelensky said on social media. 

The EU, meanwhile, urged a "swift, independent international investigation." 

Its top diplomat Kaja Kallas said the crash was a "stark reminder" of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which international investigations said was downed by a surface-to-air missile by Russian-backed rebels over eastern Ukraine in 2014. 

 Airlines cancel flights 

A series of airlines have this week began cancelling flights to Russia after the incident, including national carriers of Moscow's allies. 

The vast majority of Western airlines have stopped flights to Russia since Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive. 

Turkmenistan Airlines, the national carrier of the reclusive Central Asian state, was the latest airline to announce cancellations Saturday. 

It said that "regular flights between Ashgabat-Moscow-Ashgabat were cancelled from 30/12/2024 to 31/01/2025," without giving an explanation.

The decision came after UAE airline flydubai suspended flights between Dubai and the southern Russian cities of Mineralnye Vody and Sochi that were scheduled between December 27 and January 3. 

Kazakhstan's Qazaq Air has suspended its flights to Russia's Urals city of Yekaterinburg until the end of January. 

Earlier this week, Israeli airline El Al said it was suspending its flights to Moscow for a week.

BEIJING — The top diplomats of China and Iran agreed Saturday that the Middle East is "not a battleground for the big powers" and should not be an arena of geopolitical competition between countries outside the region. 

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi agreed that "the international community should respect the sovereignty, security, stability, unity and territorial integrity of Middle East countries," according to a readout from Beijing's foreign ministry.

Araghchi is on his first visit to China since being appointed foreign minister of Iran.

The two major trading partners reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, the proper implementation of the ceasefire in Lebanon, and the "integrated promotion of counter-terrorism, reconciliation and humanitarian processes in Syria", according to the readout.

"The two sides agreed that the Middle East belongs to the people of the Middle East, and is not a battleground for the big powers, and should not be a victim of geopolitical competition and conflicts between countries from outside the region," the ministry said.

China and Iran were both supporters of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Syria's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, is an ardent opponent of Tehran. 

Araghchi and Wang also discussed Iran's nuclear programme, which governments including Britain and the United States say could be on its way to building weapons.

Tensions have soared over Tehran's nuclear ambitions since then-president Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a landmark agreement that traded sanctions relief for limits on Iran's nuclear program.

China is a signatory to that agreement, and Wang told Araghchi Saturday that Beijing "firmly supports the Iranian side in safeguarding its legitimate rights and interests".

China is Iran's largest trading partner and a top buyer of its sanctioned oil.

BERLIN — Germany said on Saturday the suspected sabotage of an undersea power cable linking Finland and Estonia this week was a "wake-up call" that demanded new EU sanctions against Russia's "shadow fleet".

The Estlink 2 cable that carries electricity from Finland to Estonia was disconnected from the grid on Wednesday, just over a month after two telecommunications cables were severed in Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic.

"Almost every month, ships are damaging major undersea cables in the Baltic Sea," German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a statement to the Funke media group.

"Crews are leaving anchors in the water, dragging them for kilometres along the seafloor for no apparent reason, and then losing them when pulling them up," she said.

"It's more than difficult to still believe in coincidences. This is an urgent wake-up call for all of us."

Baerbock urged "new European sanctions against the Russian shadow fleet", ships that transport Russian crude and oil products despite embargoes imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The fleet is "a major threat to our environment and security" that is used by Russia "to finance its war of aggression in Ukraine", she said.

Finnish authorities said on Thursday they were investigating the oil tanker, Eagle S, that sailed from a Russian port, as part of a probe into "aggravated sabotage" of the Estlink cable.

NATO will bolster its military presence in the Baltic Sea in response, the Western alliance's secretary general, Mark Rutte, said on Friday.