Libya’s army chief of staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad, and four other Libyan officials have been killed in an air crash near , the Turkish capital, Ankara, Libya’s prime minister has said.
Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said in a statement that the crash on Tuesday was a “tragic accident” that occurred while the officials while returning from a trip from Ankara.
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“This great tragedy is a great loss for the nation, the military establishment, and all the people, as we have lost men who served their country with sincerity and dedication and were an example of discipline, responsibility, and national commitment”, he said in a statement.
Turkiye its gendarmerie had found the wreckage of the plane carrying the Libyan chief of staff, which disappeared shortly after taking off from the Turkish capital.
“The wreckage of the business jet that departed Ankara’s Esenboga airport for Tripoli has been located by Turkish gendarmerie approximately two kilometres]1.2 miles] south of Kesikkavak village in the Haymana district” 74km (45 miles) from Ankara, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X.
Yerlikaya said earlier on X that the Falcon 50 business jet had taken off at 8: 10pm (17: 10 GMT) on Tuesday and radio contact was lost at 8: 52pm (17: 52 GMT).
He said the flight had made a request for an emergency landing while over the Haymana district but no contact was established afterwards.
Several Turkish media outlets broadcast images showing the sky lit up by an explosion not far from the location where the aircraft sent a signal.
Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the incident.
Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, said the delegation had arrived in “a private jet that was rented by the Libyan government from an outside company”.
“According to reports and according to official statements from Libya, the initial findings suggest a technical error”, Koseoglu said.
She said people are “speculations” as tensions in the region are high.
Turkiye’s Ministry of Defence had announced the Libyan chief of staff’s visit to Ankara this week, saying he had met his Turkish counterpart and other military commanders.
Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina, reporting from Tripoli, said he knew al-Haddad personally and that his death would be a “huge loss” to the Libyan military.
“He was a career military man, someone that everybody respected, and he went by the book”, Traina said.
“He was someone that people here in Western Libya really respected, someone who always adhered to the law and followed the rules and he didn’t take side with any militias no matter how powerful they were.
The Libyan military institution has suffered a colossal loss.
Traina claimed that al-Haddad, who had served in the military for decades, was a prominent figure during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.
The parliament of Turkiye approved extending the mandate of Turkish soldiers’ deployment in Libya by two more years following Tuesday’s crash.
The United Nations-backed Tripoli government receives economic and military support from Ankara in close cooperation with the country’s regional government.
It later reached a maritime demarcation agreement and sent military personnel there in 2020 to support and train its government.
A preliminary agreement on energy exploration was also signed by Tripoli and Ankara in 2022.
Source: Aljazeera
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