The plane crashed during take-off from Blackbushe airport.
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In a tweet late Friday, Prince Mohammed Bin Nawaf Bin Abdel-Aziz offered his condolences to the bin Laden family, without identifying the dead. Both the elder Bin Laden, and one of his sons, died in plane crashes as well.
Eyewitnesses at the scene said there had been a “ball of flames” and “several explosions”. “There were no injuries sustained by anyone on the ground”, police said. The aircraft is understood to have been owned by a Saudi Arabian national.
Meanwhile, the Hampshire police service spokesman said an investigation into the causes of the incident had been launched.
A spokeswoman for AAIB said a team had been deployed to the site.
The private plane owned by the bin Laden family overshot the runway when trying to land at Blackbushe airport in Hampshire on Friday morning. It was too high as it was coming in to land and didn’t touch the runway.
“Or it may have been a problem with the brakes”.
The BBC reported that the aircraft had taken off from Milan’s Malpensa airport in Italy.
The Saudi embassy said it was working with British authorities to investigate the incident and to ensure the speedy handover of the bodies for funerals and burials in the kingdom.
“I was passing the airport on my way home and there was a big column of smoke in the air”, Robert Belcher, a local aviation enthusiast, told the Daily Mail. He died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967.
He started a large construction empire which still operates today. The plane’s pilot was Mazen Salem al-Dajah, a Jordanian in his late 50s, who was employed by the bin Laden corporation and had 25 years’ flying experience.
So, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other members of this family travelling all over Europe.
“The scene was attended by Blackbushe Fire and Rescue within minutes, followed by Hampshire fire, police and ambulance units”.
“I saw it going past, then it was about 20 feet off the ground and I thought, it’s not got enough runway to land here”.
“I could hear cars exploding over at the market”.
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Arab media have named the relatives as Osama bin Laden’s stepmother Rajaa Hashim, his sister Sana bin Laden and her husband Zuhair Hashim.
