Ceremony held for western Libya’s top commander and four officers, killed during a mission to strengthen bilateral military ties as UN seeks to unify divided Libya.
ANKARA — Turkiye held a military funeral on Sunday for five Libyan officers, including western Libya’s senior military commander, who died in a plane crash earlier this week after defense talks in Ankara.
The solemn ceremony took place at Murted Airfield near the Turkish capital and was attended by Turkiye’s defense minister and chief of general staff. The caskets of the officers, draped in the Libyan flag, were later transported by aircraft back to Libya.
The victims were among eight people killed on Tuesday when a private jet carrying them from Ankara to Tripoli crashed shortly after takeoff. Libyan authorities cited a technical malfunction as the cause.
The delegation was led by Gen. Muhammad Ali Ahmad Al-Haddad, the military chief of western Libya and a key figure in United Nations-led efforts to unify Libya’s fractured armed forces. He was returning with four other officers from high-level meetings aimed at boosting Turkish-Libyan military cooperation.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc stated that the victims’ remains were identified through DNA comparison with family members who traveled to Turkiye following the crash. He added that Germany has been requested to assist as an impartial third party in analyzing the aircraft’s black boxes.
Libya has been torn by conflict since the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi. The nation remains divided between rival administrations in the east and west, each supported by foreign governments and militias.
Turkiye has been the primary international supporter of the Tripoli-based government in western Libya but has recently sought to improve relations with the eastern administration as part of broader diplomatic outreach.
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