Aktau, Kazakhstan - A total of 38 people died when an Azerbaijani aircraft crashed in Kazakhstan, Kazakh Deputy Prime Minister Qanat Aldabergenuly Bozymbaev said on Wednesday.

Bozymbaev was speaking in an interview with the Kazakh news agency Tengrinews during a meeting with representatives of the investigation commission at the accident site.

A total of 29 occupants of the ill-fated Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft survived, some with serious injuries, he said.

A state investigation commission has already begun its inquiries. The cause of the crash remains unknown for the time being.

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Recovery teams discovered the airplane's flight recorders, also known as black boxes, in the evening.

Videos showed how the plane from Azerbaijan, almost out of control, crashed from a low altitude along the coast of the Caspian Sea, failing to reach the nearby airport of Aktau.

According to eyewitness reports, the plane flew two wide circles before crashing while attempting a third.

Tengrinews published a video from the cabin which featured fallen oxygen masks and the cries of panicked passengers.

The Embraer 190 aircraft took off in the morning from the Azerbaijani capital Baku and was supposed to fly to Grozny, capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, just over an hour later.

There were no official statements regarding the cause of the crash. Bozymbaev urged people not to draw hasty conclusions.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that the aircraft could not land in Grozny due to poor weather conditions and headed for an alternative airport.

Although many videos of the incident circulated on social media, he said, "reasons for the crash are still unknown to us."

He noted that there are various theories, adding, "The matter must be thoroughly investigated," according to the state news agency Azertag.

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Azerbaijan Airlines initially attributed the suspected damage to the aircraft to a possible collision with a flock of birds.

Russian military bloggers offered another explanation: the aircraft might have entered zones over the North Caucasus, where Ukrainian drones were being intercepted on Wednesday morning.

In Kyiv, the head of Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, suggested that the aircraft was shot at and damaged by Russian air defenses on its way to Grozny, without providing evidence for his claims.

The online plane tracker Flightradar24 showed that the damaged aircraft had flown with only partial control over the Caspian Sea for its last 74 minutes.

Upon impact, the short and medium-haul jet burst into flames, as videos on social media showed. According to photos, the rear section was less damaged. Survivors were reportedly rescued from this part of the wreckage. The front and middle sections, on the other hand, were destroyed.

The regional administration of Mangystau published a list of the injured, which included the names of two children.

Azerbaijan Airlines suspended their flights to the Russian cities of Grozny and Makhachkala, capital of the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan.