Private Jet Carrying Head Of Libya’s Military Crashes After Take Off From Turkey

In what could be the start of a major geopolitical crisis, moments ago Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a post on X that contact was lost with the private jet which was carrying Libya’s Army Chief of ⁠Staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad, and four other passengers. 

The Falcon-50 private jet had just taken off from the Turkish capital of Ankara in direction of Tripoli, Libya.

An emergency landing notification was received from the aircraft, at which point contact with the jet was lost, the Turkish minister added. 

Contact was lost as of 8:52pm local time over the Turkish capital Ankara, broadcaster NTV reported as flight ‍tracking data showed flights being diverted ‍away from ‍Ankara’s ⁠Esenboga airport.

As the following flight map from Flightradar24 shows, the plane was in the air for just a few minutes after take off, having reached an altitude of 32,400 feet when it disappeared from radar. The airplane of Yevgeny Prigozhin, once “Putin’s chef” before his fall out with the Russian president, suffered a similar fate when allegedly the plane exploded near cruising altitude after a bomb went off inside of it. 

Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper reports that the country shut down airspace over Ankara after the private jet incident. 

Turkey’s ‌defense ministry had ⁠announced ‍the Libyan chief of staff’s ⁠visit to Ankara earlier this ‌week, saying he had met his Turkish counterpart and other ‍military commanders.

Bloomberg reports that the Dassault Falcon 50 was 37 years old and was operated by Harmony Jets, according to data from FlightRadar24. The aircraft had recently flown into Ankara from Tripoli on Dec. 22.

Haddad as Libya’s army “chief of staff” is a reference only to the Tripoli-based GNA (Government of National Accord, or sometimes GNU) – one among several rival governments controlling Libya, but which is backed by the UN and especially Turkey.

However, what can be seen as the most powerful military is the Eastern government, based in Benghazi, led by warlord and general Khalifa Haftar, backed by Russia. Haftar soon after the war to overthrow Gaddafi returned from decades in exile in Virginia, where he lived with his family within a mere miles from CIA headquarters in Langley. Turkey has long been supporting a proxy war in Libya, against Haftar’s forces, and against Russian interests.

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