More than 30 passengers have reportedly died after an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

The Embraer 190 passenger plane flying from Azerbaijan to Russia had 62 passengers and five crew members on board, Kazakh authorities said. As of Wednesday afternoon, authorities said there were 38 dead and 29 injured survivors.

Flight J2-8243 deviated hundreds of miles from its planned route and crashed on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea. Officials did not immediately explain why it crossed the sea, but the crash occurred shortly after drone strikes hit southern Russia. Drone activity has closed airports in the region in the past, and the nearest Russian airport on the plane’s route was closed Wednesday morning.

Russia’s aviation regulator, meanwhile, said it was an emergency that may have been caused by a bird strike.

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Aviation security company Osprey Flight Solutions said the flight was “likely shot down by a Russian military air defense system,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday evening.

“The video of the wreckage and the circumstances surrounding the airspace security environment in southwest Russia indicate that the aircraft may have been hit by some form of anti-aircraft fire,” Osprey Chief Intelligence Officer Matt Borie said in an interview.

Ukrainian national security official Andriy Kovalenko also blamed a “Russian air defense system” for the crash in an X post on Wednesday.

According to Kazakh officials, there were 42 Azerbaijani citizens, 16 Russian citizens, six Kazakh and three Kyrgyz citizens on board the plane.

Russian news agency Interfax reported that both pilots died in the crash, citing a preliminary assessment by rescue workers at the scene. The news agency also quoted medical officials saying four bodies had been recovered from the crash so far.

The survivors were hospitalized, including two children, the ministry told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, The Associated Press reported.

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Video of the crash showed the plane descending quickly before bursting into flames and billowing thick black smoke as it hit the coast, Reuters reported. Bloodied and injured passengers could be seen stumbling out of a piece of fuselage that remained intact.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who had traveled to Russia, returned to Azerbaijan when he learned of the crash, the presidential press service said. Aliyev was scheduled to attend an informal meeting of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a bloc of former Soviet states formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in St. Petersburg.

Aliyev expressed his condolences to the victims’ families in a statement on social media.

“It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish those injured a speedy recovery,” he wrote.

Aliyev also signed a decree declaring December 26 a day of mourning in Azerbaijan.

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Azerbaijan Airlines said in a statement that it would keep the public informed and changed its social media banners to solid black.

“We ask God for mercy for the passengers and crew members who lost their lives,” said a translated statement on X. “Their pain is our pain. We wish the injured a speedy recovery.”

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.