Russian civil aviation officials say pilots on Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243 were making an emergency landing after a bird strike when their Embraer E190 crashed on Christmas Day less than two miles from the airport in Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing 38 of 67 passengers.

There’s growing speculation, however, that the jetliner was accidentally shot down by Russian air defenses after it was misidentified as a Ukrainian missile or drone.

Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia said in statements posted Dec. 25 on Telegram and quoted by Russian media outlets, including Ria Novosti and TASS, that its “preliminary” determination is “after a collision with birds, due to an emergency situation on board, its commander decided to ‘go’ to an alternate airfield—Aktau was chosen.”

The flight was en route from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechnya. Azerbaijan Airlines said the 55-minute flight north along the west side of the Caspian Sea was diverted because of heavy fog to make an emergency landing in Aktau, on the east shore of the sea in Kazakhstan.

Both Kazakhstani and Azerbaijani authorities were investigating the crash, reported Kazakhstan news agency Kazinform and Azerbaijan’s state news agency Azertac.

Embraer said in a statement that the Brazilian manufacturer is “ready to assist all relevant authorities.”

According to Kazakhstan’s Emergency Ministry, 38 passengers, including both pilots, were killed on impact and 29, including two children, are hospitalized; 11 in serious but stable condition.

Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Transport’s published list of all passengers indicates 37 were Azerbaijani nationals, six Kazakhstani, three Kyrgyzstani, and 16 Russian citizens.

There are no Kazakhstanis among survivors, Kazakhstan Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbayev told reporters at the scene.

An Azerbaijani delegation consisting of Azerbaijan’s emergency situations minister, deputy general prosecutor, and the vice president of Azerbaijan Airlines had been dispatched to Aktau to conduct an “on-site investigation,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s office announced.

Aliyev was in St. Petersburg attending a Commonwealth of Independent States meeting, but returned to Azerbaijan after learning of the crash.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Aliyev on the phone to express condolences.

According to flight tracking services such as Flightware and FlightRadar24.com, the E190 made what appears to be a figure-eight as it approached Aktau, climbing and descending in altitude substantially over the last minutes of the flight before impacting the ground.

FlightRadar24 said in a post on social media platform X that the jetliner encountered “strong GPS jamming” for more than 3 minutes before crashing, which “made the aircraft transmit bad ADS-B data,” information flight-trackers need to follow planes in flight.

Mobile phone videos that claim to capture Flight 8243’s final moments have surfaced online. Several show the jet rapidly ascending and then descending steeply before smashing into the ground in a fireball. Others shows part of its fuselage ripped from wings and with most of the aircraft lying upside down.

Also surfacing on the internet is speculation the civilian airliner may have been accidentally shot down by Russian air defenses on high alert after repeated Ukrainian drone attacks on Grozny.

A drone attack forced closure of the nearest fog-free airport on the plane’s flight path from Baku to Grozny, prompting it fly to the other side of the Caspian Sea to make an attempted emergency landing at Aktau, multiple sources confirm.

Unconfirmed reports from Azerbaijan-based news channel AnewZ, published in Euronews and elsewhere, say while attempting the land a third time in foggy Grozny, surviving passengers heard a “bang on board” followed by what appeared to be shrapnel striking the aircraft, slicing into its fuselage.

Various experts have preliminarily noted after viewing news footage at the crash site that wreckage appears caused by antiaircraft fire.

Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security denied Ukrainian drones were responsible, but agreed, “Damage consistent with anti-aircraft fire on the fuselage has appeared in footage of today’s wreckage.”

“Russians’ decades-long pastime of shooting down commercial airliners seems to be the cause of today’s downed Azerbaijan Airlines flight in southern Russia,” Stratcom said, claiming any other cause for the crash cited by Russians is “for the birds.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.