ASTANA, December 25. /TASS/. Nine out of 16 Russian citizens onboard an Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) plane that crashed near Aktau in Kazakhstan have survived and seven have been killed, Kazakh Transportation Minister Marat Karabayev said at a briefing.

"There were 16 people from the Russian Federation, seven died, nine survived," the official said in a video broadcast by Kazinform.

According to him, in total, 67 people were onboard the plane. "Sixty-two are passengers and five - crew. Unfortunately, 38 of them have been killed with 29 individuals surviving," he explained.

He noted that 37 Azerbaijani citizens were onboard with 23 of them killed. All six Kazakh nationals onboard the plane died. Three passengers from Kyrgyzstan have survived. "There was a crew of five people. Out of them, two people perished and three survived," Kazinform quoted him as saying.

An Embraer 190 passenger plane operated by Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), which was en route from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia’s North Caucasus region of Chechnya, crashed near the Kazakh city of Aktau earlier on Wednesday. According to the airline, there were five crew members and 62 passengers onboard the plane, including nationals of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia.