Alex Ritson

General Mohammad Ali Ahmed Al-Haddad was in Turkey for talks aimed at further strengthening military and security cooperation between the two countries.

My colleague Ankur Desai heard from our Middle East analyst, Sebastian Usher.

There was a message, a tweet from the Turkish interior minister saying that radio contact had been lost with this business jet which was carrying the Libyan chief of staff, Mohammed Ali Ahmed al-Haddad and several other officials that had left Ankara.

And he said that about 40 minutes after it had left, on the way back to Tripoli, the Libyan capital,

It had requested an emergency landing, but then there was radio silence after that.

For some time after that, there wasn't any direct confirmation of what had happened.

But then the Turkish interior minister again said that wreckage of the flight had been found about 70 kilometers from Ankara.

Well, talks were between the military staff, the other Libyan officials with him.

Now, they're representing one part of a political scene which remains fractured in Libya.

That's the internationally recognised government in Tripoli.

You still have other forces that are very much at play there.

And they were discussing closer military cooperation, also the extension of

of Libya's military presence in the country.

That had also happened just as these talks were taking place.

And really, I think it's all about Turkey in the sense that it has built up a more and more kind of dominant position in Libya.

particularly since its intervention in 2019.

Back then, there was a major turning point.

Forces from the east had essentially laid siege to Tripoli, and this internationally recognised government was really only in control of perhaps a few streets in Tripoli.

It was the military intervention by Turkey which turned the tables on that, and this strongman, Haftar, who had been leading Turkey

what he called the Libyan National Army, which was originally based in Benghazi, without getting too deep into the complications, but he was seen as the strong man in Libya.