Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian have been confirmed killed after the helicopter they were travelling in crashed in poor weather.
According to an Al Jazeera report, the bodies of the people aboard were found on Monday morning, some hours after their helicopter crashed in Iran’s northwestern region, state media reported.
The accident challenges the country’s senior leadership as Iran sits in the midst of heightened regional and global tensions centred on the war in Gaza.
Rescuers from the Iranian Red Crescent had fought through dense fog, blizzards and mountainous terrain to reach the site of the crash in the East Azerbaijan province. On finding the wreckage, they had reported “no sign of life”.
State TV gave no immediate cause for the crash, which also killed the governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials, bodyguards and crew members, according to the state-run IRNA News Agency.
The 63-year-old Raisi 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.
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, a hardliner who formerly led the country’s judiciary, is viewed as a protege of the 85-year-old Khamenei.
