Libya’s Army Chief Dies in Plane Crash

A private jet carrying Libya’s Army Chief of Staff, four other officers and three crew members crashed on Tuesday after takeoff from Turkey’s capital, Ankara, killing everyone on board.

Libyan officials said the cause of the crash was a technical malfunction on the plane.

The Libyan delegation was in Ankara for high-level defence talks aimed at boosting military cooperation between the two countries, Turkish officials said.

“It is with deep sadness and great sorrow that we learnt of the death of the Libyan army’s chief of general staff, Mohammed al-Haddad,” Libya’s prime minister, Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah, said on his Facebook page.

According to reports from Toronto Star News, Turkish officials said the wreckage of the Falcon 50-type business jet had been found near the village of Kesikkavak, in Haymana, a district some 70 kilometres (about 43.5 miles) south of Ankara.

Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya stated in a social media post that the plane took off at 8:30 p.m. and lost contact 40 minutes later.

Burhanettin Duran, the head of the Turkish presidential communications office, also stated that the plane notified air traffic control of an electrical fault and requested an emergency landing. 

The aircraft was redirected back to Esenboga, where preparations for its landing began.

The plane, however, disappeared from the radar while descending for the emergency landing, Duran said.

Turkey’s Justice Ministry said four prosecutors have been assigned to investigate the crash, as is common in such incidents.

Al-Hadad was the top military commander in western Libya and played a crucial role in the ongoing, U.N.-brokered efforts to unify Libya’s military, which has split, much like Libya’s institutions.

The four other officers who died in the crash were Gen. Al-Fitouri Ghraibil, the head of Libya’s ground forces, Brig. Gen. Mahmoud Al-Qatawi, who led the military manufacturing authority, Mohammed Al-Asawi Diab, advisor to the chief of staff, and Mohammed Omar Ahmed Mahjoub, a military photographer with the chief of staff’s office.