Libya’s Top Military Commander Killed as Aircraft Crashes in Turkey After Ankara Meetings

By Staff, Agencies

Libya’s chief of general staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad, was killed when a military aircraft crashed in central Turkey shortly after departing Ankara, following an official visit marked by high-level meetings with Turkish officials, Libyan and Turkish authorities confirmed.

Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah announced late Tuesday that Al-Haddad and four other members of his delegation had died in what he described as a “tragic and painful” loss for Libya and its armed forces. The aircraft had been traveling from Ankara to Tripoli when it went down south of the Turkish capital.

Turkish officials said the Dassault Falcon 50 jet took off from Ankara’s Esenboga Airport at 1710 GMT. Contact with air traffic control was lost roughly 40 minutes later while the plane was flying over the Haymana district. The crew had issued a distress call requesting an emergency landing, but communications were subsequently cut off. The wreckage was later discovered near Kesikkavak village, about 75 kilometers south of Ankara, in a remote and rugged area.

Following the disappearance of the aircraft from radar, Turkish authorities temporarily closed Ankara’s airspace and launched a large-scale search and rescue operation. Gendarmerie units located the crash site several hours later.

Turkey’s Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said a full investigation has been opened into the incident. The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office assigned five prosecutors to the case, with oversight from a deputy chief prosecutor. Officials stressed that the inquiry is ongoing and that the cause of the crash has yet to be determined.

Among those killed alongside al-Haddad were Major General al-Faituri Ghraibil, commander of Libya’s ground forces; Brigadier Mahmoud al-Qatiwi, head of the Military Manufacturing Authority; Mohamed al-Asawi Diab, an advisor to the chief of staff; and Mohamed Omar Ahmed Mahjoub, a media office photographer.

The Libyan delegation had spent the day in Ankara engaged in talks with senior Turkish defense and military officials, including Defense Minister Yasar Guler and Turkish Chief of General Staff Selcuk Bayraktaroglu. The visit took place against the backdrop of continued military cooperation between Turkey and Libya’s Tripoli-based government.

The crash came just one day after Turkey’s parliament voted to extend the mandate for Turkish military deployment in Libya by two more years. Turkey, a NATO member led by the US, has provided sustained military and political support to the Tripoli authorities since 2020, maintaining close security and defense ties with Libya’s internationally recognized government.