Azerbaijani plane that crashed in December was hit by Russian Pantsir-S missile, government source says

BAKU (Reuters) – An Azerbaijani passenger plane that crashed in December after being diverted from Russia to Kazakhstan was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S air defence system, an Azerbaijani government source told Reuters on Tuesday.

Thirty-eight people were killed when the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane crashed on Dec. 25 near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after re-routing across the Caspian Sea from southern Russia.

“The Azerbaijani side possesses a fragment of a Pantsir-S missile which was extracted from the aircraft and identified through international expertise,” the source said.

(Reporting by Nailia Bagirova; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)