THE Libyan army chief has been killed in an air crash in Turkey, Libya’s prime minister has said.
Gen Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad and four others were on board a Falcon 50 aircraft flying out of the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Tuesday evening.
In a post on X, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said signal with the business jet was lost at 20:52 local time (17:52 GMT) – about 42 minutes after it took off from Ankara’s airport.
The Tripoli-bound jet had issued an emergency landing request before contact was lost. The aircraft’s wreckage was later found south-west of Ankara, and an investigation is now under way into what caused the crash.
In a later post on X, Yerlikaya wrote that police had spotted the debris near the village of Kesikkavak, in the Haymana district.
He said the “public will be informed of further developments”.
In Libya, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the prime minister of the country’s internationally-recognised Government of National Unity (GNU), said he had received news of the deaths of Gen Haddad and other senior Libyan military officials on board the jet.
The prime minister called it a “great loss” for the nation, saying Libya had “lost men who served their country with sincerity and dedication”.
Gen Haddad and his team had been in Turkey for talks aimed at further strengthening military and security co-operation between the two countries.
Turkey has played an increasingly dominant role in Libya after intervening in 2019 to prevent an army from the east of the country driving out the internationally-recognised government in Tripoli, and has built close political, military and economic ties.
