Chuck Schumer, the United States Senate majority leader, on Sunday evening, said the crashing of a helicopter conveying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was an accident.

The New York politician said preliminary findings of American intelligence indicated the incident was unplanned and no foul play was immediately suspected.

Mr Schumer’s statement said “no evidence of foul play” in the helicopter crash. “It was very bad, foggy weather, northwest Iran where the copter crashed. So it looks like an accident, but it’s still being fully investigated.”

“There’s an ongoing effort to locate the helicopter. They still haven’t done that, and I’ll keep monitoring the situation as it unfolds,” Mr Schumer added during a news conference in Manhattan today.
According to the country’s media outlet, the helicopter suffered a “hard landing” near Jolfa, a city bordering Azerbaijan, about 600 kilometres (375 miles) northwest of Tehran, the Iranian capital.

Iranian media further said rescue teams found the crash site, narrowing it down to about a two-kilometre radius.

Meanwhile, concerns have poured in from leaders around the world, with some countries, like Russia and Turkey, sending teams and equipment to join the search amid turbulent weather conditions over the mountainous regions between Iranian and Azerbaijani borders.