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Libya’s military chief of staff and other senior officers were killed when their plane crashed near Ankara after reporting a technical malfunction.
Mohammad Ali Ahmad Al-Haddad, chief of general staff of the internationally recognised Tripoli-based government, had departed Ankara late on Tuesday in a private jet after talks with his Turkish counterpart and the country’s defence minister, Yaşar Güler.
Four other people from Ahmad’s delegation — including Al-Fitouri Ghraibil, the head of Libya’s ground forces — and three crew members were also on board the plane, whose crew had said they would attempt an emergency landing. Everyone on board was killed, Turkish authorities said.
The visit took place a day after Turkey’s parliament extended a mandate for Turkish soldiers to serve in Libya, part of a 2019 security pact between Turkey and the Tripoli-based government.
Turkey has supported the United Nations-recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, providing training and equipment to Libyan forces in their fight against the eastern-based Libyan National Army, which is led by renegade commander Khalifa Haftar and backed by Russia, the UAE, Egypt and others.
Turkish assistance was seen as decisive in the GNU’s repelling of Haftar’s offensive on Tripoli in 2019 and 2020, one of the deadliest periods of the civil war that began in Libya in 2014.
Libyan Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah called the crash “a tragic accident” in a post on Facebook. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke with Dbeibah on Wednesday to express condolences, the Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency said.
Al-Haddad, who became the top western general in 2020, had worked to expand military relations with Turkey and other countries. He was also part of UN-backed efforts to unify Libya’s military factions, holding talks with his eastern counterpart in recent years.
The Dassault Falcon 50 jet carrying the delegation had notified aviation authorities of an electrical fault and requested to return to Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport for an emergency landing soon after take-off, interior minister Ali Yerlikaya told reporters.
Contact with the plane was lost 20 minutes later at 8.52pm local time when the jet was about 85km south west of the airport.
A witness outside Haymana told the CNNTurk news channel a “very violent explosion occurred” around 8.50pm that shook the ground, followed by flashes of light in the sky.
Search teams early on Wednesday recovered the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders and continued to comb a 3 sq km crash site near the town of Haymana, Yerlikaya said.
A 22-person delegation from Libya, including family members and defence officials, has travelled to Turkey and a criminal investigation is under way, he said.
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