The head of Libya’s armed forces and four other high-ranking military officials diEd on Tuesday night, Dec. 23, when their business jet crashed shortly after taking off from Ankara, officials in Turkey’s capital and Tripoli said. The wreckage of their Falcon 50 aircraft was located by Turkish security personnel in the Haymana district near Ankara, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said. Three crew members were also k!Iled.
Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah expressed the nation’s grief on his Facebook page:
“It is with deep sadness and great sorrow that we learnt of the de@th of the Libyan army’s chief of general staff, Lieutenant General Mohammed al-Haddad.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Haddad had held talks in Ankara with Turkish Defence Minister Yasar Guler and his Turkish counterpart, Selcuk Bayraktaroglu, before returning to Tripoli. According to Yerlikaya, Haddad’s jet took off from Ankara’s Esenboga airport at 1710 GMT, and “contact was lost” 42 minutes later.
The aircraft issued an emergency landing notification near Haymana — 74 kilometres (45 miles) from Ankara, but contact could not be reestablished, the minister sald. A senior Turkish official reported that the plane requested an emergency landing because of an electrical failure 16 minutes after it took off.
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. Burhan Cicek, a local in Haymana, recalled the moment when the plane crashed:
“I heard a big sound of explosion. It was like a bomb,” he told AFP.
Libya’s ambassador to Ankara was also at the site.
Walid Ellafi, Libyan minister of state for communication and political affairs, told local television channel Libya al-Ahrar that the Turkish government informed his government of the incident:
“We received a call from the Turkish authorities immediately after the incident, reporting that contact with the aircraft had been lost,” the minister said.
“All contact with the aircraft was lost about half an hour after takeoff from Ankara airport due to a technical problem.
We are awaiting the conclusions of the Turkish investigation, and it appears that the plane crashed.”
The minister confirmed the identities of the other passengers: Haddad’s advisor, Mohammed Al-Assawi, as well as Major General Al-Fitouri Ghraibil, Major General Mohammed Jumaa, and their escort, Mohammed Al-Mahjoub. Haddad had been the army’s chief of general staff since August 2020, appointed by then-prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj.
The incident marks a severe blow to Libya’s military leadership and comes amid a delicate political and security situation in the country. Investigations by Turkish authorities are ongoing to determine the exact cause of the crash.
