A passenger plane with about a hundred people on board crashed near the city of Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan on Friday after taking off, and crashed into a house in an accident that killed 12 people and wounded dozens.
The Fokker 100, operated by Beck Air, faced a problem shortly after take-off from Almaty, the commercial center of Kazakhstan, on its way to the capital, Nur Sultan, before dawn.
The Civil Aviation Authority said the plane had tumbled during take-off and penetrated a concrete fence before hitting a two-story building. It was not clear what caused the accident so far.
"He touched the runway’s tail twice before it crashed ... A committee will be formed to find out if it was the pilot's fault or technical problems," Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar told reporters.
A Reuters reporter saw the wreckage of the plane's front and other parts of its body scattered around the rubble of the house.
A survivor of the accident told the Tengrinews news site that she heard a "terrible sound" and then the plane began to fade.
"The plane was leaning during flight. Everything was like what happens in the movies, screaming and shouting and people crying. ”
The health care authorities in Almaty initially announced that the death toll from the accident was 15 or more, but later modified the number to 12. It said that 66 people were taken to hospital, some of them in serious condition.
The plane was carrying 93 passengers and five crew, and the Interior Ministry of Kazakhstan said that the pilot of the plane was among the dead.
The ministry said it was investigating a possible violation of aviation and safety rules, which is a regular legal procedure. Heavy fog was covering the area at the time of the accident.
The Aviation Authority of Kazakhstan announced that it had suspended all flights of Fokker 100 aircraft pending the results of the investigation.
Another survivor, a businessman named Aslan Nazaraliev, told Vremya newspaper that the plane began to vibrate as it boarded after about two minutes of takeoff.
"At some point we started to fall and the fall was not vertical, but at an angle. It looked as though there was no control of the plane. ”
Authorities cordoned off the site of the fall in the village of Almerek, which is located just after the end of the runway.
"Those responsible (for the incident) will be severely punished according to the law," Kazakhstan President Kasim Gomart Tokayev said on Twitter, and expressed his condolences to the victims and their families.