Suspicious Death of the Chief of Staff of the Western Libya Armed Forces in Turkey

TEHRAN (Defapress) - A military funeral ceremony was held in Ankara for the body of the commander of the Western Libya army and four accompanying officers.

The funeral took place on Saturday at 8 am local time at the Mürted air base near Ankara and was attended by the Turkish army chief of staff and the defense minister. Five coffins wrapped in the Libyan flag were then loaded for transport to this country.

The personal plane of General Mohammed Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad, four military officers, and three crew members, crashed mysteriously on Tuesday after taking off from the Turkish capital and en route to Tripoli. Libyan authorities announced the cause of the crash as a technical failure in the plane.

Al-Haddad was the commander of the Western Libya army and played a key role in the UN’s efforts to unify the Libyan army.

The high-level delegation was in Ankara for military talks aimed at strengthening military cooperation between Western Libya and Turkey.

The bodies recovered from the crash site were transferred to the Ankara morgue. Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunç told reporters that the victims’ DNA had been matched with their family members who arrived in Turkey from Libya as part of a 22-member delegation.

Germany has been asked to examine the plane’s black boxes as an impartial third party.

Libya has been divided since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, with rival governments forming in the east and west of the country, each backed by different militias and foreign governments.

In the west, the Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, is based in Tripoli and is supported by the United Nations and Turkey.

In the east, the Government of National Accord (GNA), led by Prime Minister Osama Hammad, is supported by the House of Representatives and the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by Khalifa Haftar.

Western Libya has international legitimacy and control of the capital, while eastern Libya has the upper hand, relying on military power and oil resources.

This division of power has left Libya in a state of “neither full war nor lasting peace,” and any incident, such as al-Haddad’s death, could change the fragile balance between the two factions.

Turkey is the main backer of western Libya, but it has recently taken steps to improve relations with eastern Libya.