Laden relatives killed in UK plane crash

Members of Osama bin Laden's family were among four people killed when a private jet crashed into a car auction lot in Britain, Saudi Arabia's embassy in London said yesterday.

While the embassy did not identify the dead, a source close to the family speaking to AFP and Saudi media indicated that they were bin Laden's stepmother Raja Hashim, his sister Sanaa, the sister's husband Zuhair Hashem, and a Jordanian pilot.

The Saudi-registered Phenom 300 jet came down on Friday as it tried to land at Blackbushe Airport, a small airfield in Hampshire, southern England.

The Saudi ambassador "offered his condolences to the sons of the late Mohammed bin Laden and their relations for the grave incident of the crash of the plane carrying members of the family at Blackbushe airport," a statement posted on the embassy's Twitter account said.

The embassy also said it would work with British authorities to investigate the incident and repatriate the bodies for burial in Saudi Arabia.

Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda militant network and the man behind the 9/11 attacks, was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011.

His father Mohammed, a construction magnate with 54 children, died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967.

British media reported that the aircraft had taken off from Milan's Malpensa airport in Italy.