The Azerbaijani airliner crash that killed at least 38 people Wednesday may have been the result of a "mistake" from Russian anti-aircraft defenses, retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt tells Newsmax.
"It does look like there was anti-aircraft machine gun fire that went through the cabin," Holt said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America" on Thursday. "You can see it across the fuselage, but the other part is the tack of the airplane itself. It went over Grozny. I think what we have here is, is a mistake in Chechnya by an anti-aircraft artillery battery, but that's only with 5% of the details."
The passenger jet crashed on Christmas Day near the Kazakhstani city of Aktau with 67 people aboard. It had diverted its course over an area where Moscow air defenses have been battling Ukrainian drones.
Osprey Flight Solutions, which works on analysis for carriers that still fly into Russia after Western airlines halted flights during the war, said that damage to the aircraft, military activity, and the footage of the crash led to a conclusion that the passenger jet was "likely shot down by a Russian military air defense system."
"There is some reason this airplane went down and it didn't go down just because of a mechanical error or bad flying," said Holt. "Those pilots, I watched that final footage. Those pilots did all they could to bring that rascal in and save lives. It's amazing that anybody walked away from it at all."
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, also on Thursday's program, agreed with Holt.
"This aircraft was going through an area which has had heightened tension because of political intrigue and different changes at the top of the of the political hierarchy in those nations, and we have things like this happening which are inevitable," he said.
Shaffer added that he's been looking at the video and has seen what looks to be penetrations of the plane's outer hull, "which only happens if something either explodes or is shot at. These did look something to me from my previous experience, looked like some sort of a weapon, either small arms or something a little bit bigger, was fired into the hull."
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