Iran’s army has discovered no indication of criminal behaviour in the helicopter crash that killed the country’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, and seven others, official television claimed.
The 63-year-old perished on Sunday after his chopper crashed in the country’s mountainous northwest while returning from a dam inauguration near the border with Azerbaijan.
“No bullet holes or similar impacts were observed on the helicopter wreckage,” said a preliminary report by the general staff of the armed forces published by the official IRNA news agency late Thursday.
“The helicopter caught fire after hitting an elevated area,” it said, adding that “no suspicious content was observed during the communications between the watch tower and the flight crew.”
Raisi’s helicopter had been flying on a “pre-planned route and did not leave the designated flight path” before it crashed.
The report mentioned that the wreckage of the helicopter had been found by Iranian drones early on Monday, but the “complexity of the area, fog, and low temperature” hindered the work of search and rescue teams.
The army said “more time is needed” to investigate the crash and that it would announce more details later.
Raisi was buried to rest in his hometown of Mashhad on Thursday, capping off days of funeral rites in some of Iran’s largest cities, including the capital, which were attended by large crowds of mourners.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was among those slain in the event, and he was buried on Thursday in Shahre Ray, south of the city.
