SAO PAULO (Reuters) - The extraction of flight data from the Brazilian-made Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan last month was completed at a lab run by Brazil's air force, according to a statement released by the entity on Monday. The data from the Embraer plane was sent to the Kazakhstan authority investigating the crash.

Survivors from the Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 that went down in Kazakhstan are speaking out for the first time since the tragedy. 29 passengers survived the crash.

Azerbaijan Airlines, the carrier of the passenger jet that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas Day, said preliminary investigations have found the disaster occurred “as a result of physical and technical external interference,

Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was scheduled to travel from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny, a city in the Russian region of Chechnya, on Wednesday, but was diverted and ultimately crashed on the other side of the Caspian Sea, less than two miles from the airport in Aktau, Kazakhstan.

On 25 December, 38 people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which had been due to land in Russia, crash-landed in Kazakhstan. The circumstances around the crash remain unclear, but limited evidence so far suggests it may have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air-defence system as it tried to land in Chechnya.

Survivors of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan reported hearing thuds and explosions from outside the aircraft during the flight, as the cause of the deadly catastrophe remains under investigation.

Thirty-eight passengers and crew died when Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 from the airline’s hub at Baku to Grozny, the capital of Russia ‘s Chechnya, crashed short of Aktau airport in Kazakhstan; 29 survived.

In the crash’s aftermath, Azerbaijan has unleashed rare and stinging criticism of Russia, with the country’s president saying Moscow’s response has caused “surprise, regret and rightful indignation.”