ANKARA (Realist English). A business jet carrying Libya’s chief of the general staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad, crashed in Turkey late on Tuesday shortly after departing Ankara, killing all five people on board, Libyan and Turkish officials said.
The death of the senior military commander was confirmed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, head of Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Unity (GNU). Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said contact was lost with the Falcon 50 business jet, tail number 9H-DFJ, at 20:52 local time.
According to Yerlikaya, the aircraft took off from Ankara at 20:10 en route to Tripoli. The crew requested an emergency landing near the Haymana district before communications were cut. Wreckage was later found by Turkish gendarmerie units about two kilometres south of the village of Kesikkavak in Haymana. All five occupants were killed.
In a statement, Dbeibah said the crash occurred as the Libyan delegation was returning from an official visit to Turkey. “This painful loss is a major blow to the nation, the armed forces and the entire Libyan people,” he said.
Libya’s Government of National Unity said those on board included the commander of Libya’s ground forces, the director of the military production authority, a military adviser and the chief of staff’s photographer. The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.
Tripoli said the prime minister had instructed the defence minister to dispatch an official delegation to Ankara to follow the investigation. Libya’s minister of state for political affairs Walid Ellafi told Libya Alahrar television that the aircraft had been leased in Malta, but that there was currently insufficient information about its owner or technical condition.
The UN-recognised government in Tripoli declared three days of nationwide mourning.
According to Reuters, al-Haddad had been in Ankara the day before the crash for talks with Turkey’s defence leadership, including Defence Minister Yasar Guler, the Turkish chief of the general staff and other senior military officials.
The accident occurred a day after Turkey’s parliament approved a one-year extension of the mandate allowing Turkish troops to be deployed in Libya at the request of the Tripoli-based government. Turkey provides military and political support to Libya’s western authorities, while in recent months also increasing contacts with the country’s east, where forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar hold sway.
Russia’s TASS news agency reported that Haftar expressed condolences over the death of Libya’s army chief.