Iran’s President Declared Dead After ‘No Signs of Life’ Found at Helicopter Crash Site

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has been found dead following a helicopter crash, officials confirmed to multiple outlets.

Raisi, 63, was discovered along with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, 60, and six others in a fiery wreckage on Monday, May 20. The update comes after an hours-long search for the officials after their helicopter crashed in northwestern Iran, per the Associated Press and BBC.

President Raisi’s helicopter went down in heavy foggy conditions in a mountainous area of the region on Sunday, May 19, making it initially difficult to find his location after the crash.  

Drone footage shared by Turkish authorities on Monday morning showed a fire blazing on a steep valley 12 miles south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border that officials “suspected to be wreckage of helicopter,” per AP. 

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The Red Crescent Society found “no signs of life” and the helicopter “completely burned” when they reached the crash site, The Independent reported.

Among the others dead in the helicopter crash were the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province and three crew members, the state-run IRNA news agency reported, per AP. The cause of the crash has not yet been dete -

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Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, will now serve as president until the country’s next election, per multiple outlets.

Five days of mourning have been declared in Iran in the wake of the president’s death by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei, 85, shared his condolences for President Raisi on X (formerly Twitter), writing, “This unfortunate incident happened during a service attempt; The whole period of responsibility of this noble and selfless person, both during the short term of the presidency and before that, was completely spent in #non-stop_effort in serving the people, the country and Islam.”

“Raisi did not know fatigue. In this tragic incident, the Iranian nation lost a sincere and valuable servant. For him, the goodness and satisfaction of the people, which indicates God's satisfaction, was preferred to everything, so his annoyances from the ungratefulness and taunts of ill-wishers did not prevent him from working day and night to improve and improve affairs.”

Raisi became the eighth president of Iran after winning the election in 2021. He is sanctioned by the U.S. over his links to the mass executions of political prisoners in the 1988 Iran-Iraq war, per AP.  

He is survived by his wife Jamileh Alamolhoda and two daughters.

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