BRASILIA: Brazil has started examining the black box recorders from a Brazilian-made jetliner that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 people aboard, the air force said Thursday.
The Azerbaijan Airlines plane, an Embraer 190, crash-landed on Christmas Day as it flew to the Chechen capital Grozny in southern Russia.
The Brazilian air force said in a statement that the data from the recorders would be extracted and analyzed as soon as possible.
These devices captured cockpit dialogue and flight data from the plane. They are being examined by the Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center, a unit of the Brazilian air force.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has demanded that Moscow admit it mistakenly fired on the plane as it tried to make a scheduled landing at the Grozny airport.
Russia has not confirmed that one of its air-defense missiles hit the plane, though President Vladimir Putin told Aliyev in a phone call that the systems were active at the time and that he was sorry the incident took place in Russian airspace.
Russia said Grozny was being attacked by Ukrainian drones when the airliner approached to make its landing through thick fog.
Investigators from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia have traveled to Brazil for the investigation, officials said.
The Brazilian air force said Kazakhstan is in charge of releasing the results of the black box analysis.
Brazil examining black boxes from crashed Russia-bound plane
https://arab.news/v7zm8
Brazil examining black boxes from crashed Russia-bound plane
North Korea accuses South of another drone incursion
- The North Korean military tracked a drone “moving northwards” over the South Korean border county of Ganghwa
- South Korea said it had no record of the flight
SEOUL: North Korea accused the South on Saturday of flying another spy drone over its territory this month, a claim that Seoul denied.
The North Korean military tracked a drone “moving northwards” over the South Korean border county of Ganghwa in early January before shooting it down near the North Korean city of Kaesong, a spokesperson said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“Surveillance equipment was installed” on the drone and analysis of the wreckage showed it had stored footage of the North’s “important targets” including border areas, the spokesperson said.
Photos of the alleged drone released by KCNA showed the wreckage of a winged craft lying on the ground next to a collection of grey and blue components it said included cameras.
South Korea said it had no record of the flight, and Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the drone in the photos was “not a model operated by our military.”
The office of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said a national security meeting would be held on Saturday to discuss the matter.
Lee had ordered a “swift and rigorous investigation” by a joint military-police investigative team, his office said in a later statement.
On the possibility that civilians operated the drone, Lee said: “if true, it is a serious crime that threatens peace on the Korean Peninsula and national security.”
Located northwest of Seoul, Ganghwa County is one of the closest South Korean territories to North Korea.
KCNA also released aerial images of Kaesong that it said were taken by the drone.
They were “clear evidence” that the aircraft had “intruded into (our) airspace for the purpose of surveillance and reconnaissance,” Pyongyang’s military spokesperson said.
They added that the incursion was similar to one in September when the South flew drones near its border city of Paju.
Seoul would be forced to “pay a dear price for their unpardonable hysteria” if such flights continued, the spokesperson said.
South Korea is already investigating alleged drone flights over the North in late 2024 ordered by then-President Yoon Suk Yeol. Seoul’s military has not confirmed those flights.
Prosecutors have indicted Yoon on charges that he acted illegally in ordering them, hoping to provoke a response from Pyongyang and use it as a pretext for his short-lived bid to impose martial law.
- Cheap, commercial drone -
Flight-path data showed the latest drone was flying in square patterns over Kaesong before it was shot down, KCNA said.
But experts said the cheap, commercially available model was unlikely to have come from Seoul’s armed forces.
“The South Korean military already has drones capable of transmitting high-resolution live feeds,” said Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
“Using an outdated drone that requires physical retrieval of a memory card, simply to film factory rooftops clearly visible on satellite imagery, does not hold up from a military planning perspective.”
