Two people who were granted asylum in Kazakhstan after fleeing alleged repression of minority groups in China were assaulted after their arrival in the Central Asian country, a rights group said Friday.

Kazakhstan abolished the death penalty, making permanent a nearly two-decade freeze on capital punishment in the authoritarian Central Asian country, a notice on the presidential website said Saturday. 

Twelve people died when a plane carrying 100 passengers and crew crashed shortly after takeoff in Kazakhstan on Friday and collided with a house, but many onboard survived without serious injury.

Kazakhstan said Friday it had evacuated 231 of its citizens, most of them children, from Syria after they travelled or were taken there to join the Islamic State group.

Kazakhstan's ruling party on Tuesday nominated Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as its candidate for a snap presidential vote in June, after he was put forward by the oil-rich country's founding leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Tuesday called a snap election for June as the Central Asian nation seeks a new leader following the shock resignation of its longtime ruler.

The head of Kazakhstan's senate was sworn in as interim president in a pomp-filled ceremony Wednesday, and immediately proposed renaming the country's capital after his predecessor.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only leader an independent Kazakhstan has ever known, shocked the nation on Tuesday with his resignation after nearly three decades in power.

Kazakhstan's long-ruling President Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed a new prime minister on Monday, his office said, after dismissing the government over a lack of economic development.

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said Wednesday that the perpetrators of deadly attacks in a city in the country's oil belt were acting on instructions "from abroad".

Gunmen went on the rampage in the northwestern city of Aktobe near the Russian border on Sunday, killing three civilians at two gun stores before trying to storm a military base with a hijacked bus, killing three soldiers.

Police in Kazakhstan were hunting for up to seven gunmen on Monday after a series of "terror" attacks that killed six people, the interior ministry said.

"We acknowledge this is an act of terror," said interior minister Kalmukhanbet Kasymov.