Turkish authorities on Wednesday recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from a private jet crash near Ankara that killed Libya’s army chief of staff Lieutenant General Mohammed al-Haddad and four of his aides. Officials said the recovery of the black box would be critical in determining the cause of the deadly incident.
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The Falcon 50 aircraft had requested an emergency landing shortly after taking off from Ankara, citing an electrical failure, before contact with air traffic control was lost. The jet was returning to Tripoli after senior Libyan military officials held talks with Turkish counterparts. The wreckage was later located in the Haymana district, south of the Turkish capital.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told reporters at the crash site that both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder had been secured and that examination procedures were already under way. He said analysis of the devices would help investigators piece together the sequence of events leading up to the crash, though the process could take several months.
Turkish search teams have found the black box and cockpit voice recorder of the Falcon 50 jet that crashed in Ankara killing Libya’s army chief and others on board.#Libya #Libyaobserver pic.twitter.com/5DKppKy0W9
— The Libya Observer (@Lyobserver) December 24, 2025
Yerlikaya added that the crash area covered roughly three square kilometres and that recovery operations were still ongoing. A total of 408 personnel from Turkey’s disaster agency AFAD, police, and health services were deployed at the site, while drones were being used to relay real-time images to command centres.
There were eight people on board the jet, including three crew members. A 22-member Libyan delegation, including five relatives of the deceased, arrived in Ankara following the incident. Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah expressed deep sorrow over the loss, offering condolences to the families of those killed.
Haddad had served as Libya’s chief of general staff since August 2020 and was a key military figure within the UN-recognised government based in Tripoli. Libya remains divided between rival administrations in the west and east, following years of instability since the 2011 uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi.
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Turkey, a close ally of the Tripoli-based government, has launched a formal investigation through the Ankara prosecutor’s office, with officials stressing that the black box data will be central to establishing the exact cause of the crash.