Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused Russia on Sunday of firing at an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet before it crashed and of initially trying to cover up the cause of the fatal disaster,

By Nailia Bagirova and Anton Kolodyazhnyy BAKU/MOSCOW (Reuters) -Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday that a passenger plane that crashed last week, killing 38 people, had been damaged by shooting from the ground in Russia,

The coordinator for Strategic Communications of the US administration, John Kirby, said that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying from Baku to Grozny could have been shot down by the Russian air defense.

Russians who reviewed the transcript of the crew's conversations from the Baku-Grozny flight themselves admit that the air crash was caused by their air defense systems (ADS), according to Andriy Kovalenko,

An Azerbaijan Airlines flight travelling from Baku to Grozny has crashed in Kazakhstan with nearly 70 passengers onboard. Several survivors are in a critical condition. Source: Radio Liberty's Kazakhstan service;

NATO spokesman Farah Dahlalla expressed condolences over the crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane near the Kazakh city of Aktau and called for a comprehensive investigation.

"No one claims that it was done on purpose," an Azerbaijan official told Reuters. They added their government "expects the Russian side to confess."

Experts say evidence in the Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash in Kazakhstan points to a possible midair explosion, not an encounter with a flock of birds.