Three members of dead Al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s family were among four people killed in a small private plane crash in southern England, the British police reported on Saturday.
The Embraer Phenom 300 jet with four people on board was flying from Milan’s Malpensa airport to Blackbushe airport in southern England when it crashed at a nearby car auction site. It was not immediately clear how the victims were related to Osama bin Laden, whose family is one of the most prominent business dynasties in Saudi Arabia.
“We do believe three of the deceased to be the mother, sister and brother-in-law of the owner of the aircraft, all of whom are from the bin Laden family, but formal post-mortem examinations are ongoing,” Hampshire Police said in a statement.
However, conflicting media reports said the victims included bin Laden’s half-sister along with her husband and mother. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television named those killed as Sana’ Mohamed bin Laden, her husband Zuhair Hashem and Sana’s mother, Raja’ Hashem.
The plane’s Jordanian pilot was the other person on board, al-Arabiya said. British police said the three passengers were travelling to Britain for a vacation.The Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud, offered his condolences via Twitter to the family of the late Mohammed bin Laden over the crash Friday, but he did not name the victims.
The late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — killed in a U.S. raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 — was one of dozens of children of Mohammed bin Laden. The bin Laden family is large and is spread around the world.
The UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said Friday it had sent a team to investigate the incident but declined to give further details.
