Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in a mountainous area of northwest Iran.
Rescuers found the burned remains of the aircraft on Monday morning after he 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.
Live updates – Iranian president killed in crash
Iran‘s Mehr news agency reported “all passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred”.
State TV said it had smashed into a mountain – there has been no official word on the cause but there was thick fog in the area at the time.
“President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash… unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” an official told Reuters.
Drone footage appeared to show the tail of the helicopter and scattered debris.
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President of Iran killed in crash
The crash happened in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province
As the sun rose, rescuers spotted the wreckage from around 1.25 miles away, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told state media.
The search involving civilian and military teams had been hampered by fog and the remote location.
Iranian news agency IRNA said the president was flying in an American-made Bell 212 helicopter.
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Iranian TV showed the president on the helicopter during a trip to Azerbaijan
TV pictures from Sunday showed thick fog at the search site. Pic: IRNA
Mr Raisi, 63, who was seen as a frontrunner to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader, was travelling back from Azerbaijan where he had opened a dam with the country’s president.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, also died in the crash.
The governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards were also believed to be on board.
The president’s helicopter was travelling in a convoy of three aircraft and Iranian media initially described it as a “hard landing”.
State media says this is the last-known picture of the helicopter. Pic: IRNA
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first world leaders to react to the news of Mr Raisi’s death.
“India stands with Iran in this time of sorrow,” he said in a post on X.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani expressed “great sadness and great sorrow” in a statement.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, posting on X, offered “deepest condolences and sympathies to the Iranian nation on this terrible loss”.
President Raisi was elected in 2021 in a vote that had the lowest turnout in the Islamic republic’s history.
The president was sanctioned by the US over the mass execution of political prisoners at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988.
His time in charge included major protests over Mahsa Amini – the woman who died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.
Iran also took the unprecedented decision in April to launch a drone and missile attack on Israel.
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Sky’s Middle East correspondent, Alistair Bunkall, says the president’s successor is almost certain to be “another ultra-conservative hardliner” and that Iran’s approach to foreign affairs and the war in Gaza is likely to be “business as usual”.
However, he says there’s a chance anti-government protesters could seize the chance to take to the streets again.
“There are also many dissident groups inside Iran, including an off-shoot of Islamic State – they might seek to take advantage of this situation,” he adds.
