The Iranian military announced on Wednesday that they used locally produced drones to locate President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter after it crashed in the northwestern mountains.
The helicopter went down on a foggy mountainside on Sunday while returning to Tabriz from a ceremony near the Azerbaijan border.
With assistance from the European Union, Russia, and Turkey, a massive search and rescue operation was launched. The crash site was finally found early Monday.
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Iranian military officials stated that a Turkish drone, despite being equipped with night vision, failed to locate the crash site. “This drone failed to accurately announce the location of the helicopter crash and finally returned to Turkey,” the military said in a statement via the official IRNA news agency.
“Finally, in the early hours of Monday morning, the exact spot of the helicopter crash was discovered by the ground rescue forces and Iranian drones of the armed forces,” the statement added.
Armed Forces Chief Mohammad Bagheri has ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash, which also claimed the lives of seven members of Raisi’s entourage, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
