A Libyan military plane carrying medical patients has crashed near Tunisia’s capital, killing all 11 crew and passengers on board, Tunisian authorities said.
Libyan media are reporting that a jihadist leader is among the dead. Sheikh Daouedi held an official post as Libya’s assistant secretary of state for martyrs, and was on the military flight to seek medical treatment in Tunis.
The Antonov aircraft went down after the pilot tried to land in farmland near Grombalia, south of Tunis, Tunisia’s state news agency reported.
Six crew members as well as the patients and their companions died, a spokesman for Tunisia’s defense ministry said. Libyans often travel to Tunisia for medical treatment.
It was the second crash involving a military plane in North Africa in two weeks. An Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain during bad weather on Feb. 11, killing 77 people, in the country’s worst air disaster for a decade.
Source: theguardian.com
