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Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president, dies in helicopter crash, aged 63
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died after the helicopter he was travelling on crashed in a mountainous area in the northwest of Iran. Rescue teams located the crash site on Monday morning, at which point the president and his 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 Reuters, asking not to be named. Iran’s Mehr news agency reported that “all passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred”.
It was reported that images showed the aircraft had smashed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash. “President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash… unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” an official told Reuters.
READ ALSO: Helicopter carrying Iranian President Raisi crashes in Azerbaija
State news agency IRNA said the president was flying in an American-made Bell 212 helicopter. ‘No sign of life’ detected at crash site Mr 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 helicopter crashed.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials were also said to have been on board when the crash, initially described as a “hard landing”, happened amid fog on Sunday.
Photograph: Ali Hamed Haghdoust/Reuters.
The chief of staff of Iran’s army had ordered all military resources and the Revolutionary Guard to be deployed in the search, which had been hampered by bad weather. As the sun rose, rescuers saw the helicopter from a distance of around 1.25 miles, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told state media.
President Raisi led a historic visit to Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba in 2023, raising the level of cooperation between Iran and Latin America.
Under Raisi, Iran grew economically despite sanctions, joined BRICS, restored relations with Saudi Arabia, signed a 25-year deal with China, and defended Palestine as leader of the Axis of Resistance.
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