The Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan on Wednesday said at least three of its citizens died in the Germanwings airliner crash in the French Alps, which killed all 150 people on board, AFP reports.
The Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan on Wednesday said at least three of its citizens died in the Germanwings airliner crash in the French Alps, which killed all 150 people on board, AFP reports.
The jet operated by the budget carrier of Germany's Lufthansa went down Tuesday in a remote area, in the worst aviation disaster in mainland France in decades.
Kazakhstan's foreign ministry confirmed that three of its citizens -- Erbol and Adil Imankulov and Aizhan Isengaliyeva -- were among the dead. It did not say if they held any other nationalities.
The ministry said that it was trying to confirm whether a fourth passenger, Yelena Bles, held Kazakh citizenship following information from Germany authorities.
Germanwings said the Airbus -- flying from Barcelona to Duesseldorf -- plunged for eight minutes but the crew made no distress call before crashing near the ski resort of Barcelonnette, according to French officials.
Kazakhstan once had a sizeable ethnic German community but many of them emigrated to Germany following the collapse of the Soviet Union.