LONDON — A sister of former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed along with her husband and mother when a private jet crashed in southern England on Friday, according to media reports.
The Embraer Phenom 300 with four people on board including its Jordanian pilot was flying from Malpensa airport in Milan to Blackbushe airport in southern England when it crashed at a car auction site, Dubai-based al-Arabiya television reported on its website.
The Saudi-owned media group identified the three passengers as Sanaa Mohamed bin Laden, her husband Zuhair Hashem and Sanaa's mother, Rajaa Hashem. It also published a photo of Sanaa.
Footage of the aftermath of Friday's crash showed plumes of black smoke rising into the sky and several cars on fire in the outdoor area of British Car Auctions, where vehicles were parked awaiting sale.
The bin Laden family is one of the most prominent business dynasties in the kingdom.
A spokeswoman for the British police told Reuters that there were four people on the aircraft when it crashed, but she did not state their identities.
Without identifying the victims, the Saudi ambassador to Britain offered condolences to the bin Laden family on the embassy's Twitter account and said the mission was working with British authorities to investigate the incident and organise the speedy transfer of the bodies for burial in the kingdom.
Osama bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the 2001 attacks on the United States, was killed by US special forces in a raid on his hideout in Pakistan in 2011.
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.
Mohammed bin Laden himself died in a plane crash in Saudi Arabia in 1967.