An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan after travelling far off course, killing 38 of the 67 people on board, officials said.

The Embraer 190 aircraft that was supposed to fly northwest from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the city of Grozny in Chechnya in southern Russia, but instead flew across the Caspian Sea and went down near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.