Comment: More from RT:

WATCH 1st VIDEOS from passenger jet crash site in Almaty, Kazakhstan

Rescuers and emergency personnel were seen working at the scene of the crash amid the wreckage of the aircraft and rubble of a brick house in multiple photos and videos shared on social media.

The local rescue service confirmed that there was nobody inside the building as it was under construction.

'It was like the movies, people were screaming and crying': Survivor describes harrowing plane crash

A passenger recalled her nightmarish journey aboard a Bek Air airliner in Kazakhstan, which struggled to gain altitude and flew at a "weird angle" before crashing into a building and killing 12 people on Friday.

The jet was scheduled to take off from the southern city of Almaty at 7:05am local time and travel to Nur-Sultan, the nation's capital, but the flight was "delayed" for unknown reasons, a passenger told Tengri News.

The woman, who was not named in the report, said she was asleep when the aircraft finally took off.

"I woke up when the plane began gaining altitude. As it turned out, the plane had been climbing two times already and had lost altitude [in both instances]."

She then heard "a loud sound coming either from the engine or somewhere else."

"The plane was flying at a weird angle. It was just like in the movies: people were howling, screaming, and crying. I can't describe how scary it was. Then there was a hit... Someone shouted, 'Get out!' I was speechless. I was seated near the wing, and remember how I had stepped on it [to exit the aircraft]."

The woman recalled how the other survivors were worried that the plane could blow up on the ground.

"It seemed like a [bad] dream," she said.

According to early reports, a Fokker 100 plane with up to 100 people on board crashed into a small two-story building during take-off. 12 people died and almost 50 were hospitalized.

See also: Cargo vessel crashes into bollard on Istanbul's Bosphorus

UPDATE: 29th December 18:45CET

RFE/RL reports that authorities are still investigating the cause of the deadly crash:

A top Kazakh official says authorities initially are looking at a possible "technical malfunction" or pilot error in the crash of a Bek Air plane that killed 12 of the 98 passengers and crew aboard early on December 27.

Roman Sklyar, a deputy prime minister, said a special government commission was being sent to the site to carry out an investigation into the accident, which occurred as the Fokker 100 plane attempted to take off from the Almaty airport en route to the capital, Nur-Sultan.

He cautioned, though, that the investigation was in the early stages and no cause had yet been pinpointed.

Sklyar said eight people died at the scene, while two died at the airport and two others at the hospital. The pilot was killed in the crash.

Sklyar added that 49 people were hospitalized, 18 in serious condition.

"Either this is pilot error or there were technical reasons," Sklyar said at a press conference in Almaty on December 27.

"The aircraft split into two parts. Most of the passengers who died were in the front part."

Kazakhstan on December 28 observed a day of mourning to honor the victims of the crash.

In the capital, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan's largest flag was at half-staff for the day of mourning while officials made urgent appeals for blood donations to help the dozens of injured survivors.

Russia and China were among the countries to join the European Union and the Vatican in expressing condolences to the former Soviet Central Asian republic.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development, the plane was unable to get to a significant height and crashed into a two-story building.

Four foreigners were aboard the plane, officials said -- two from Ukraine and one each from China and Kyrgyzstan. They all survived, Kazakh authorities said.

Bek Air, which operates a fleet of Fokker 100 planes, said it has canceled some 100 flights from December 27-31 as the investigation into the cause of the craft proceeds.

UPDATE 3 Jan 2020

Video has surfaced showing the moment the plane crashed into a building next to the runway:

Comment: Two Europeans who joined the previous protests were asked to leave the country. Their visas don't allow participation in organized protests.



After a video of a police officer telling protesters to "go to Pakistan" went viral, the Indian minister for minorities has called for disciplinary measures to be taken:

Union Minister for Minorities Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that "immediate action should be taken against the police officer" if the allegations are true. He stressed that the government would respond if police or officials were found to have carried out "atrocities on the people."

In a video that went viral on social media and was shared by local news outlets, a senior police officer in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh confronts a group of Muslims rallying against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

"If you don't want to live here, go to Pakistan," the cop told the group. He also threatened to "throw them all in jail" and "destroy them," according to translations provided by Indian media.

He later told reporters that some young men were hurling stones at police and shouting pro-Pakistan slogans during the protest. "I asked them if they love Pakistan so much, then they should go there."

Meerut Additional Director General (ADG) Prashant Kumar defended the incendiary comments, claiming the policeman was trying to control a protest that was turning violent. "The officer only asked them to stop pelting stones and [said] they can go there [Pakistan] if they wanted to," Kumar said.

Meerut has been the scene of violent clashes amid nationwide unrest over the CAA. Five people died there last week, and relatives reportedly claim they were shot dead by police.

Officers denied killing anyone, saying they opened fire only to control the crowd. They also suggested that violent armed protesters might be responsible for the deaths, as their shots went astray. Police released CCTV footage purportedly showing demonstrators with firearms.

Comment: No one should ever be attacked because of their faith, especially while peacefully celebrating a religious holiday. The recent epidemic of "anti-semitic attacks" makes us wonder, however, what's really going on. Cui bono?

In an Op-ed today in The Jerusalem Post, titled Inconvenient antisemitism: The daily attacks on Jews in New York, Seth Frantzman ends with:

The result is a multi-layered cake of excuses and fear at confronting a wider range of perpetrators of antisemitism in New York. If violent antisemitism that sees Jews controlling the police and being responsible for slavery and white supremacy, is growing in the African American community in America then confronting it requires asking a minority community that is also a victim to be self-critical. In the US there tends to be pass for minority groups who are homophobic or racist. Society can only confront one kind of racism. This is largely because those driving the agenda of confronting racism either have blinders on regarding all forms of racism and antisemitism or are unaware of it because they don't conduct surveys and polls regarding the prevalence of antisemitism in places like Brooklyn. When the perpetrators and victims do not fit a convenient model, it is easier to just excuse the attacks or see them as random. Unfortunately, in the US these attacks are not random, and there is rising violent antisemitism coming from a broad spectrum of communities, including white supremacists and from African Americans. Confronting it requires the same broad spectrum to step up the struggle.

Does it sound like some Jewish people are vying for THE minority position among all minorities?

UPDATE 21:00 CET

Governor Cuomo has called the attack "an act of domestic terrorism" fueled by intolerance:

"This is intolerance meets ignorance meets illegality," Cuomo told reporters on Sunday, calling the attack the 13th incidence of anti-Semitism in recent weeks. "This is violence spurred by hate, it is mass violence, and I consider it an act of domestic terrorism."

Police have arrested the alleged perpetrator, though his possible terrorist motives are unknown. The man was arrested without struggle in Harlem shortly after midnight.

The attack took place during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, as Rabbi Rottenberg was hosting around 100 people in his home for the lighting of the candle marking the seventh night of the holiday. The rabbi's home is located in Rockland County, which has the highest per-capita population of Jews of any US county.

The New York Police Department's counterterrorism unit said it is "closely monitoring" the incident. Prior to the attack, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the NYPD would step up patrols in Jewish neighborhoods of New York City, citing a string of recent anti-Semitic attacks.

An eyewitness describes what he saw go down at the rabbi's house:

Witness Aron Kohn described the moment the suspect walked into the Rabbi's residence and began attacking with a knife he described as almost as big as "a broomstick."

"I saw him walking in by the door. I asked who was coming in in the middle of the night with an umbrella. While I was saying that, he pulled it out from the thing and he started to run into the big room, which was on the left side. And I had thrown tables and chairs, that he should get out of here. And the injured guy, he was bleeding here, bleeding in his hand, all over," Kohn said. "I ran into the other room to save my life. I saw him running this way, so I ran the other way to save my life. He said something but I could not understand what he said. I saw him pull out the knife from the holder, the case."

Again, it's all very vague.

In France, one small community of Jews in the country's northeast have been targeted dozens of times in the last year. Despite having the full force of the state on their side, authorities there still have ZERO leads...

42 acts of vandalism in 1.5 years: Jewish cemeteries are being systematically desecrated in Alsace, France, but not a SINGLE arrest has been made

The suspect's name and image, by the way:


Update 22:30 CET

The above suspect, Grafton Thomas, is also now, retrospectively, a suspect in a 'stab-a-Jew-and-run' incident in the same town of Monsey, NY, on 20 November this year (that's the earlier incident we comment on above, the one where a cash reward was offered for info).