NNA – The Iranian military said Wednesday that it had used domestically produced drones to locate the helicopter of president Ebrahim Raisi after it crashed in the northwestern mountains.
Raisirsquo;s helicopter came down on a fog-shrouded mountainside on Sunday as it returned to the city of Tabriz from a ceremony on the border with Azerbaijan.
A huge search and rescue operation was launched, involving help from the European Union, Russia and Turkiye before the crash site was located early on Monday.
The Iranian military said that a drone dispatched by Turkiye had failed to locate the crash site ldquo;despite having night-vison equipmentldquo;
ldquo;This drone failed to accurately announce the location of the helicopter crash and finally returned to Turkiye,rdquo; the military said in a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency
ldquo;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.rdquo;
Armed forces chief Mohammad Bagheri has ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash, which also killed seven members of Raisirsquo;s entourage, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.–AFP
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