Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi Dead At 63 After Helicopter Crash
HuffPost
The president had widely been considered a potential successor to Iran's supreme leader.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died Sunday in a helicopter accident after the craft crashed in the mountains, the country’s state-run news agency said early Monday morning. He was 63.
The country’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, a provincial governor and other officials were also on board during the crash and are presumed dead.
The news shocked Iran and the world as officials said a massive search and rescue operation was underway. Raisi had been traveling with an entourage to the country’s border with Azerbaijan, where he jointly inaugurated a new dam with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
The helicopter crashed near the border around 1 p.m. local time, and officials said earlier there was bad weather and heavy fog in the area. An official cause of the accident has not yet been determined. Rescue teams had searched through dense forest for more than 12 hours, at times calling off the search due to the fierce weather.
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