Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash in a mountainous area of ​​the country.

On Monday, rescuers found the helicopter carrying the president and other officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who also died, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. It crashed on Sunday near the village of Tavil in northwestern Iran.

Raisi was returning from a party on the border with Azerbaijan in a group of three helicopters when his ship crashed. There was thick fog in the region, making conditions difficult for rescue teams.

The president’s death comes amid unrest in the Middle East. In April, Iran carried out an unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel as the Jewish state is in the seventh month of a war to oust Iran-backed Hamas forces from the Gaza Strip.

Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric in his 60s who won the 2021 presidential election, was seen as the favorite to ultimately succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

Raisi’s air fleet consisted of high-ranking officials, including the foreign minister, who was probably on board the president’s plane at the time.

Both Raisi and Amirabdollahian oversaw the restoration of Iran’s diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia through a China-brokered agreement announced in March 2023. However, it was also a time when negotiations to revive Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and end it reached an impasse. economic sanctions.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that intelligence agencies had told him there was no evidence of foul play, NBC reported. (continued below)

Iranian Shiite pilgrims pray for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi after the helicopter crash that took the lives of him and his foreign minister on Sunday at the Imam Ali shrine in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq. (Photo: Reuters)

Iranian television earlier broadcast live footage of dozens of ambulances amid heavy rain and fog. The Turkish Defense Ministry said it sent the Akinci drone in response to Iran’s request.

The European Union has launched a rapid response mapping service following a request for assistance from Iran, EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič announced in a post on Portal X.

Earlier on Sunday, Raisi met his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev to inaugurate a jointly built dam on the border between the two countries.

Raisi was accused by human rights groups of involvement in the mass executions of thousands of political dissidents in the late 1980s. In 2018, London-based Amnesty International said he chaired a “death commission” and called on the United Nations to investigate him in terms of crimes against humanity.