London: Family members of the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were killed in a private jet crash in southern England, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.K. said. Prince Mohammed Bin Nawaf Bin Abdel-Aziz offered his condolences to the wealthy bin Laden family, which owns a major construction company in Saudi Arabia. He didn’t further identify the dead.
“The embassy will follow up on the incident and its circumstances with the concerned British authorities and work on speeding up the handover of the bodies of the victims to the kingdom for prayer and burial,” the ambassador said in a statement tweeted by the embassy’s official Twitter account late Friday.
British police say four people—a pilot and three passengers—died when an executive jet crashed into a parking lot and burst into flames while trying to land at an airport in southern England on Friday afternoon. The plane had been flying from Malpensa Airport in Milan, Italy.
Blackbushe Airport said the Embraer Phenom 300 jet crashed near the end of the runway while trying to land at the airfield about 40 miles, or 65 kilometers, southwest of London, which is used by private planes and flying clubs.
Andrew Thomas, who was at a car auction sales center based at the airport, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that “the plane nose-dived into the cars and exploded on impact.” He said he saw the plane and several cars in flames. The official Saudi Press Agency earlier identified the plane as Saudi-owned without mentioning the bin Ladens. It said a Saudi official would work with British authorities in investigating the crash.
The bin Laden family disowned Osama in 1994 when Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship because of his militant activities. The al Qaeda leader was killed by U.S. Special Forces in Pakistan in 2011.
The family is a large and wealthy one. Osama bin Laden’s billionaire father Mohammed, who died in 1967, had more than 50 children and founded the Binladen Group, a sprawling construction conglomerate awarded many major building contracts in the Sunni kingdom.
Bureau Report
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