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A Kazakh-owned passenger airline carrying at least 20 people crashed while landing in bad weather in Almaty on Tuesday, killing everyone on board, the airline said.
The plane, operated by the SCAT airline was making a second attempt to land when the crash occurred, Interfax reported.
Flight DV760 from Kokshetau to Almaty was carrying 15 passengers and five crew members, it said, citing the airline.
“According to preliminary data, there are no survivors," the airline said in a statement carried by Interfax.
An emergencies official told Reuters, however, that 22 people died in the crash. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the figures.
Almaty region Deputy Governor Amandyk Batalov said the jet was a Canadian-built Bombardier CRJ200 and that it shattered into pieces when it struck the ground, according to Interfax. He said it was carrying a group of businessmen.
SCAT, whose fleet also includes Boeing 757s and Boeing 737s, said information about the cause of the crash would be released after it examined the flight recorders.
Kokshetau, a city of about 135,000 people in northern Kazakhstan, is located 1,250 kilometers
from Almaty, Kazakhstan's commercial capital.
This is the second major plane crash in Kazakhstan in a month. On Dec. 25, an An-72 military plane went down as it was preparing to land at the airport in Shymkent in southern Kazakhstan. All 27 people on board died, including the acting head of the country's border guards agency, Turganbek Stambekov.
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