Kazakhstan plane crash: 12 people killed as Bek Air jet crashes into house near airport

‘Everything was like in a movie: screaming, shouting, people crying,’ survivor says

At least 12 people have died after a plane crashed into a house in Kazakhstan.

Sixty-six others have been taken to hospital with injuries, some of them critical, after the Bek Air aircraft slammed into the two-storey building shortly after take-off from Almaty International Airport on Friday morning.

The plane lost altitude and crashed at 7.22am local time (1.22am GMT), airport officials said. Ninety-three passengers and five crew were on board the flight to the Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan.

Local authorities had earlier put the death toll at 15, but the country’s interior ministry later revised the figure downward without explanation.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the airport said about 1,000 people were working on the rescue operation following the crash, which did not spark a fire.

Images of the scene showed the front of the broken-up fuselage rammed into a house and the rear of the plane lying in a field next to the airport.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the crash or whether anyone was in the house when it was hit by the plane.

A passenger who survived the disaster told news website Tengrinews she heard a “terrifying sound” before the plane started losing altitude.

“The plane was flying at a tilt. Everything was like in a movie: screaming, shouting, people crying,” she said.

Another survivor, businessman Aslan Nazaraliyev, told the newspaper Vremya the plane started shaking while gaining altitude about two minutes after take-off.

“At some point we started falling, not vertically, but at an angle. It seemed like control over the plane had been lost,” he said.

The interior ministry said it was investigating a possible breach of flight operation and safety rules, a standard legal procedure.

The plane has been identified as a Fokker-100, a medium-sized, twin-turbofan jet airliner. It was made in 1996, the year the company which manufactured the model went bankrupt, and was certified to operate in May this year.

All Bek Air and Fokker-100 flights in Kazakhstan have been suspended pending investigation of the crash, the country’s aviation committee said.​

“Those responsible will face tough punishment in accordance with the law,” tweeted Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who declared a day of mourning and expressed condolences to the victims and their families.

In 2009, all Kazakh airlines except flagship carrier Air Astana were banned from operating in the European Union because they did not meet international safety standards. The ban was lifted in 2016.

Additional reporting by agencies