Kazakh authorities on December 29 said the cockpit recorders of the Brazilian-made plane involved in a deadly crash are being sent to Brazil for investigation amid accusations by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that Russia is trying to "cover up" the cause of the tragedy.
The Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane was flying from the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, to Grozny in Russia's Chechnya region on December 25 when it was diverted and crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people on board.
There has been growing evidence that the jet was hit by a Russian air-defense missile in Chechnya before it went down near the city of Aqtau in western Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh Transport Ministry said the commission in charge of the probe had "decided to send the flight recorders to the Center for the Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents in Brazil" -- the country that manufactured the popular Embraer-190 jet, utilized mainly for flights of less than three hours.
Aliyev said the plane was mistakenly shot down while approaching Grozny, adding that the jet's GPS systems were affected by electronic jamming.
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"Our plane was hit by accident," Aliyev told state television on December 29. "Therefore, admitting the guilt, apologizing in a timely manner to Azerbaijan, which is considered a friendly country, and informing the public about this -- all these were measures and steps that should have been taken."
"Unfortunately, for the first three days, we heard nothing from Russia except for some absurd theories," added Aliyev, citing statements in Russia that attributed the crash to birds or the explosion of some sort of gas cylinder on the plane.
Those theories, Aliyev said, showed "that the Russian side wanted to cover up the issue."
Aliyev's comments came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Aliyev but did not accept blame for the plane crash.
In a phone call with Aliyev, Putin said Russian air defenses were repelling an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Grozny when the plane was trying to land at the airport there, a Kremlin statement said.
Putin "conveyed his apologies in connection with the fact that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace," the statement said, indicating that Putin acknowledged the plane was damaged over Chechnya but stopped short of stating a Russian missile strike was the cause.
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Russia's Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation into the possible violation of flight safety rules, the statement said. It said two Azerbaijani prosecutors were working with Russian law enforcement in Grozny and that Russian, Azerbaijani, and Kazakh authorities were working together at the crash site in Kazakhstan.
The Kremlin statement is likely to further increase suspicions that a Russian missile damaged the Embraer-190 jet before it was diverted to Aktau, across the Caspian Sea from Chechnya, where it crashed near the shore after a steep descent and burst into flames.
Evidence of a missile strike includes footage of damage inside the plane before the crash and images of the hole-pocked tail section after the crash, as well as comments from survivors who said they heard at least one explosion outside the plane over Chechnya.
Azerbaijani lawmaker Hikmat Babaoghlu told RFE/RL on December 27 that there is a "very strong" possibility that the plane was damaged by a Russian air-defense missile. He said that the "observations and conclusions drawn so far support the idea that the plane being shot down is the closest to the truth."