The death of Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi has been confirmed by State media in Iran after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in poor weather in an eastern province.
The Iranian Red Crescent reported finding the helicopter wreckage with no signs of life, carrying the country’s foreign minister and other officials.
Africa Today News, New York gathered that rescue teams fought through dense fog, blizzards and mountainous terrain to reach the wreckage in East Azerbaijan province early on Monday, but state television gave no immediate cause for the crash. With Raisi were Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
“President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash … unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” the Reuters news agency reported, citing an unnamed Iranian official.
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Raisi, 63, was elected president on his second attempt in 2021, and since taking office, has overseen a tightening of morality laws, a bloody crackdown on antigovernment protests triggered by the death in custody of 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini, and taken a tougher approach to nuclear talks with world powers.
Last month, he ordered an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel, following an alleged Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus which killed 13 people including a top commander and his deputy.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran, had earlier sought to reassure Iranians, some of whom turned out to pray for Raisi’s wellbeing, saying there would be no disruption to state affairs.
Raisi was travelling home to Tehran when state television said his helicopter made a “hard landing” near Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan, some 600km (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital. Later, state media put the crash location farther east near the village of Uzi, but details remained contradictory.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was also on the flight, as well as the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Earlier on Monday, Turkish authorities released what they described as drone footage showing what appeared to be a fire in the wilderness that they “suspected to be [the] wreckage of [a] helicopter”. The coordinates listed in the footage put the fire some 20km (12 miles) south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border on the side of a steep mountain.