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.

Two U.S. military officials tell NBC News the U.S. has intelligence indicating that the Russians may have misidentified the Azerbaijan Airlines flight that went down earlier this week, and shot it down with an air defense system.