Military analysts believe that the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft that crashed on Christmas Day while travelling from Baku to Grozny in Russia near Kazakhstan's Aqtau may have been unintentionally struck by a Russian missile or anti-aircraft fire.

Of the 67 individuals on board, 38 perished in the disaster, including five crew members and 62 passengers. Eleven and sixteen-year-old girls were two of the 29 survivors.

Media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Euronews, and AFP have stated that aviation experts have discovered holes in the plane's fuselage and marks on the plane's tail that may have been caused by missile shrapnel, even though the investigation is still ongoing.

A video posted on X from the military conflict website Clash Report showed several enormous flaws in the aircraft's fuselage.

Besides this, the Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft was heading toward an area where reports of Ukrainian drone activity had been made. Other than this, anti-aircraft defences provide strong protection for Grozny, the capital of Chechnya and a major target for Kyiv in the current conflict with Russia.

Yury Podolyaka, a Russian military blogger, told AFP that the holes in pictures of the plane's wreckage seemed to be created by an "anti-aircraft missile system." Possibly, he said, the aircraft was "accidentally hit by an air-defense missile."

"The damage and the state of airspace security point to the same conclusion," Osprey Flight Solutions Chief Intelligence Officer Matt Borie told the Wall Street Journal.

Meduza, a Russian news agency, concurred with this conclusion. The Kyiv Independent said that footage of the damaged airliner revealed evidence of a surface-to-air missile strike and that other military and civilian aircraft struck by the same missiles had also suffered comparable damage.

After their request to land at Grozny airport was turned down, several of the survivors, all of whom were seated in the tail section, reported hearing huge explosions outside the aircraft. The UK's Telegraph claims that the plane's oxygen tanks most likely exploded in midair, causing these explosions.

A female passenger appears to have suffered shrapnel injuries to her leg in one of the plane's interior videos.
A second emergency, perhaps a hydraulics failure led to a request to land in Aqtau, but the plane subsequently turned back across the Caspian Sea, probably toward Kazakhstan.

Regretfully, the aircraft crashed into a field around three kilometres distant before reaching the airport.
The images posted online showed the aircraft trying to stay in the air, nosediving, and eventually crashing into the ground, shattering the fuselage and tail. Azerbaijan Airlines first claimed that a swarm of birds struck the aircraft, however, they subsequently withdrew that claim.