Flight attendants and a passengers described the moments before an Azerbaijan Airlines flight went down in Kazakhstan, killing dozens.

Sources told Reuters the plane had been hit by Russian fire. "It was as if it was drunk - not the same plane anymore," one passenger recalled.

An Azerbaijani minister suggested Friday that an airliner that crashed this week was hit by a weapon, citing expert analysis and survivor testimony indicating that the plane was struck from the outside.

The Embraer 190 was traveling to Grozny, Russia, but crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 people onboard. Investigators are focusing on Russian air defense as the likely cause.

A passenger jet operated by Azerbaijan Airlines crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defence systems against Ukrainian attack drones.

The flight was en route from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to Grozny, in Russia’s south, when it diverted and attempted an emergency landing in Kazakhstan.

Footage shows survivors walking and being dragged away from the tail section of a crashed Azerbaijan Airlines plane. Wednesday's flight from Baku to Grozny in the Russian republic of Chechnya was diverted across the Caspian Sea and went down near the western Kazakhstan city of Aktau.

A passenger on the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan told Reuters that there was at least one loud bang as it approached its original destination of Grozny in southern Russia. Fligh

Aviation experts say that Russian air defense fire was likely responsible for the Azerbaijani plane crash the day before that killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured.