Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died after an helicopter he was travelling on Sunday crashed in a mountainous area of North-West Iran.
The country’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was in the same helicopter along with other top government officials and the crew members also died in the crash.
Rescue teams located the crash site on Monday morning, at which point the president and the foreign minister had been missing for more than 12 hours.
“President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash,” a senior Iranian official told the journalists in a press conference.
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“President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash … unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” the official said.
Raisi, 63, who was seen as a frontrunner to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s Supreme Leader, was travelling after a visit to the border with Azerbaijan when the American-made Bell 212 helicopter crashed.
Images from the crash showed the aircraft had smashed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.
⚡️BREAKING
President Raisi and the country’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were martyred in the helicopter crash that occurred on Sunday pic.twitter.com/AFBJVUc9gi
— Iran Observer (@IranObserver0) May 20, 2024
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