TURKISH authorities found the cockpit voice recorder and black box from a private jet that crashed Wednesday, killing the head of Libya’s armed forces and his four aides.
The Falcon 50 aircraft requested an emergency landing because of an electrical failure minutes after it took off from the Turkish capital Ankara, but contact was lost, Turkish officials said. The plane was returning to Tripoli.
The wreckage was located by Turkish security personnel in the Haymana district near Ankara.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told reporters at the crash site that the plane’s voice recorder and the flight data recorder (black box) had been recovered.
“The examination and evaluation processes of these devices have been initiated,” he said.
Lieutenant General Mohammed al-Haddad and four other aides were returning to Tripoli after holding talks in Ankara with Turkish military officials. There were eight people aboard the plane, including three crew members.
Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah expressed “deep sadness and great sorrow” over the death of the army chief.
Yerlikaya said the bodies were still at the crash site, which covers approximately three square kilometres (one square mile), adding that a 22-member Libyan delegation, including five relatives of the deceased, had arrived in Ankara.
“We pray for God’s mercy upon those who lost their lives in this tragic accident and extend our condolences to their families,” he added.
A total of 408 personnel from the government’s disaster agency AFAD, police, and health services are at the scene, the minister said, while the real-time imagery from the area is being relayed by drones.
Turkish officials said the Ankara prosecutor’s office has launched an investigation into the incident.
Tolga Tuzun Inan of Istanbul-based Bahcesehir University said a single electrical failure would not leave an aircraft completely dark.
“When multiple triggering factors combine with meteorological conditions, such a situation may occur,” he told the private NTV broadcaster.
He said data from the black box would reveal what happened, adding the analysis process may take several months.
Haddad had been the army’s chief of general staff since August 2020 and was appointed by then-prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj.
Libya is split between a UN-recognised government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Dbeibah, and Commander Khalifa Haftar’s administration in the east.
The North African country has been divided since a NATO-backed revolt toppled and killed longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Turkey has close ties with the UN-backed government in Tripoli, to which it provides economic and military support.
But Ankara has recently also reached out to the rival administration in the east, with the head of Turkey’s intelligence agency, Ibrahim Kalin, meeting with Haftar in Benghazi in August.