Iran declares five days of mourning for president – as US says he has ‘blood on his hands’
Iran’s president and foreign minister have died after their helicopter crashed in mountains.
The deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and minister Hossein Amirabdollahian were confirmed by officials after rescuers found the chopper’s burned wreckage on Monday morning, more than 12 hours after it came down in bad weather.
Iranian media said the crash in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province killed eight people in all, including three crew members on the helicopter, which Iran purchased in the early 2000s.
Five days of national mourning have been declared by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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Rescuers reach helicopter crash site
Funeral processions will be held in several Iranian cities on Tuesday.
The bodies of Mr Raisi and Mr Amirabdollahian will be flown to the central Iranian city of Qom, where the late president studied, and then brought to the capital Tehran, where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is expected to lead congregational funeral prayers.
Search teams at the crash site. Pic: WANA/Reuters
Mr Raisi, Iran’s eighth president since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, will be buried in the northeastern city of Mashhad on Thursday.
US State department spokesperson Matt Miller said Mr Raisi “has blood on his hands” as the former hardline cleric was “a brutal participant in the repression of the Iranian people for nearly four decades”.
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Iran state TV confirms president’s death
Mr Miller said Mr Raisi “was involved in numerous horrific human rights abuses, including playing a key role in the extra judicial killing of thousands of political prisoners in 1988”.
“Some of the worst human rights abuses occurred during his tenure as president, especially the human rights abuses against the women and girls of Iran,” he added.
The US approach to Iran “will not change” because of Mr Raisi’s death, Mr Miller said.
Iran media says the crash happened in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province
Iran‘s Mehr news agency reported “all passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred”.
State TV said it had smashed into a mountain. There has been no official word on the cause, but there was thick fog in the area.
“President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash… unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” an official told Reuters.
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President of Iran killed in crash
Drone footage appeared to show the tail of the helicopter and scattered debris.
The search involving civilian and military teams had been hampered by fog and the remoteness of the crash site.
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Iranian TV showed the president on the helicopter during a trip to Iran’s border with Azerbaijan
TV pictures from Sunday showed thick fog at the search site. Pic: IRNA
Mr Raisi, 63, who was seen as a frontrunner to succeed Ayatollah Khamenei, was travelling from Iran’s border with Azerbaijan where he had inaugurated a dam with the country’s president.
The governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, officials, and bodyguards, are also believed to be among those killed.
The helicopter was travelling in a convoy of three aircraft, and Iranian media initially described it as a “hard landing”.
Iranian news agency IRNA said Mr Raisi was flying in an American-made Bell 212 helicopter purchased in the early 2000s.
State media says this is the last-known picture of the helicopter. Pic: IRNA
The Iranian president was inaugurating a dam with the Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev (right). Pic: IRNA
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the world leaders to react to the president’s death.
He said he was “deeply saddened and shocked” and offered “heartfelt condolences to his family and the people of Iran”.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani expressed “great sadness and great sorrow” in a statement.
Pakistan leader Shehbaz Sharif, posting on X, offered “deepest condolences and sympathies to the Iranian nation on this terrible loss”.
Mohammad Mokhber has been put in interim charge. File pic: AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin called it a “huge tragedy” and “a difficult, irreparable loss”.
Mr Raisi was elected in 2021 in a vote that had the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.
He previously served in several roles in Iran’s judicial system, including as deputy prosecutor. He was sanctioned by the US over the mass execution of political prisoners at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988.
His time in charge included major protests over Mahsa Amini – the woman who died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.
Iran also took the unprecedented decision in April to launch a drone and missile attack on Israel.
Sky’s Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall said Mr Raisi was not a universally popular figure and that many inside Iran will celebrate his death.
He said the country’s approach to foreign affairs after his death was likely to be “business as usual”.
The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.
Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.
We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.
It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.
Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.
We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.
David Lammy and Norway’s Foreign Minister Barth Eide view the melting Blomstrandbreen glacier. Pic: PA
The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.
“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”
In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.
The foreign secretary visiting SvalSat, a satellite ground station which monitors climate in Svalbard. Pic: PA
Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.
“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.
But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.
Norwegian observers are concerned about the Russian leader – and Trump being ‘too soft’ on him. Pic: AP
Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”
Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.
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In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.
There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.
“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”
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This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.
Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.
World
‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment
A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.
Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing
The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.
“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.
He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.
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Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.
Children are among the bulk of the casualties in Gaza
“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.
“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.
“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”
Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.
They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.
Dr Victoria Rose is a British surgeon working in southern Gaza’s last remaining hospital
Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.
“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.
“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”
One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.
Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.
“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”
Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”
Hatem Senior
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The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.
He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.
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Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”
Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.
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