12 killed when plane crashes in Kazakhstan

Survivor says aircraft began ‘shaking quite severely’ after takeoff.

MOSCOW — A plane with 98 people aboard crashed shortly after takeoff early Friday in Kazakhstan, killing at least 12 people, Kazakh officials said. Fiftyfour people were hospitalized with injuries, and at least 10 of them were in critical condition.

The cause of the predawn crash in the Central Asian nation was unclear, but authorities were looking at whether pilot error or technical failure were factors, Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said. The plane’s tail hit the runway twice during takeoff, indicating that it struggled to get airborne, Sklyar said.

The Bek Air aircraft, identified as a 23-year-old Fokker 100, hit a concrete wall and a two-story building after takeoff from Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city and former capital. It lost altitude at 7:22 a.m., the Almaty International Airport said.

One survivor said the plane started shaking less than two minutes after takeoff.“At first the left wing jolted really hard, then the right. The plane continued to gain altitude, shaking quite severely, and then went down,” Aslan Nazaraliyev said by phone.

Government officials said the plane underwent de-icing before the flight, but Nazaraliyev recalled that its wings were covered in ice.

The plane was flying to Nur-Sultan, the capital formerly known as Astana.

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