AL Jazeera:
Iranian officials say extensive search operations are continuing amid poor weather conditions after a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a “hard landing”, state television reported.
Iranian state media said the crash occurred on Sunday near Jolfa in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, in the north of the country.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed concern over the situation in a meeting with families of Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel and urged the country to pray for Raisi and others who were in the helicopter.
“We hope that God returns the honourable president and his companions to the arms of the nation,” he said. He also urged Iranians not to worry and stressed that there would be “no disruption” in governance.
Raisi was returning from a visit to neighbouring Azerbaijan, where he had travelled to inaugurate a dam alongside the country’s President Ilham Aliyev, when the incident took place.
State-linked media said three helicopters were in the Iranian president’s convoy, and the two others made it back safely.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, East Azerbaijan Governor Malek Rahmati, and Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, the representative of the Iranian supreme leader to the province, were in the same helicopter as Raisi, state media reported.
Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian and Housing and Transportation Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash were in the other helicopters that made it back safely.
People who were with the president inside the helicopter managed to make an emergency call, according to the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency.
Tasnim reported that the call increased hopes that the incident can be concluded “without fatalities”.
