Police and rescuers in the Abai region spent nine hours searching for a 68-year-old man lost in the steppe. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
At around seven in the morning, his brother reported the disappearance to police and said the elderly relative had recently found it difficult to navigate the terrain.
The missing man was eventually found about seven kilometers from the village of Bulak, the Abai region police department reported.
According to the brother, the man's memory had deteriorated recently. Police and rescuers began searching immediately after the report.
"Specialists split into three groups and began examining their assigned areas. A drone was also deployed to expand the search zone and survey the open terrain from the air," the Abai region police department said.
Drones help rescuers survey large and hard-to-reach areas faster, while thermal imagers allow searches to continue at night.
According to October data from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the agency had 242 drones, including 187 with AI functions. Since the beginning of 2026, they have been used in about five thousand operations, during which 28 people were rescued.
Earlier, Kursiv reported how a drone helped find an elderly man in the Zhambyl region after several days of searching. In the North Kazakhstan region, rescuers used a drone to find a girl who had gotten lost in a cornfield. And in the Pavlodar region, rescuers located a missing girl on the bank of the Irtysh River using a drone with a loudspeaker. She heard the rescuers' message, responded, and walked toward the search team.