The health ministry said a special flight was being sent from the Kazakh capital Astana with specialist doctors to treat the injured.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared Thursday a day of national mourning and cancelled a planned visit to Russia for an informal summit of leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a grouping of former Soviet nations.
Aliyev’s office said the president “ordered the prompt initiation of urgent measures to investigate the causes of the disaster”.
“I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in the crash… and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” Aliyev said in a social media post.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a phone conversation with Aliyev and also “expressed his condolences in connection with the crash”, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news conference.
A Russian emergency situations ministry had been sent to Aktau with medical personnel and other equipment, Putin said later as he opened the CIS leaders’ meeting in Saint Petersburg.
