International leaders have begun sharing their reactions to the news that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died. Here's what they're saying:

• Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has posted on X saying he is "deeply saddened and shocked by the tragic demise" of President Raisi and his nation "stands with Iran" during this "time of sorrow"

• Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said Raisi's death is a "terrible loss" and his nation would observe a day of mourning

• President of the United Arab Emirates Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan says his country stands with Iran during this time, Reuters news agency reports
• While President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has praised President Raisi as an unconditional friend and an extraordinary leader

Bahman Kalbasi
BBC Persian

Image source, Reuters

The constitution of the Islamic Republic has a straightforward remedy for instances where a president is incapable of executing his duties due to illness, death or impeachment and removal by parliament.

It tasks the vice-president - in this case, Mohammad Mokhber - to run the affairs of the country and jointly with the heads of parliament and the judiciary oversee an election for a new president within a maximum of 50 days.

This would only happen with the confirmation of the supreme leader, who has the final say in all matters of state in Iran.

With state media confirming that President Ebrahim Raisi has died, the regime in Iran will move to hold such an election - one that is unlikely to gather any more interest among the public than the last one did.

Last time around, all serious challengers to Raisi were barred from running, clearing the path for him to enter office with the lowest number of voters (around 30% of eligible voters), while the majority boycotted what they saw as a fixed election.

Good morning from London. If you're just joining our live coverage, here's what we know so far:

• Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has been confirmed to have died following a helicopter crash in north-western Iran on Sunday, according to state media
• Foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several others are also reported to be among the dead
• State media says the "hard landing" happened as hard-line cleric President Raisi was making his way to the city of Tabriz, after returning from the border with Azerbaijan
• Before their deaths were confirmed, vigils took place in the capital, Tehran, with pictures showing people kneeling in prayer
• The incident sparked a massive search operation that was hampered by bad weather conditions
• A number of countries offered help with the rescue mission, including Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Turkey also sent a mountain rescue team to Iran
• India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of the first foreign leaders to pay tribute, saying he is "deeply saddened and shocked" by his death

The names of some of those killed in the helicopter crash besides Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian have now been released.

The IRNA state news agency, external says that also on board were Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Al-e Hashem, the imam for Friday prayers in the city of Tabriz, and General Malek Rahmati, the governor of the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan.

The commander of the president's protection unit, Sardar Seyed Mehdi Mousavi, was also killed, as were a number of bodyguards and helicopter crew who have not yet been named.

Raisi had been tipped for the pinnacle of power in Iranpublished at 05:57 British Summer Time 20 May

05:57 BST 20 May

Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent

He stood close to the pinnacle of power in the Islamic Republic and was widely tipped to rise to its very top.

A dramatic turn dealt him a different hand.

The sudden demise of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on Sunday has upended the growing speculation over who will eventually replace the 85-year-old Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whose own health has long been the focus of intense interest.

The tragic fate of Iran’s hard-line president is not expected to disrupt the direction of Iranian policy or jolt the Islamic Republic in any consequential way.

But it will test a system where conservative hardliners now dominate all branches of power, both elected and unelected.

His opponents will hail the exit of a former prosecutor accused of a decisive role in the mass execution of political prisoners in the 1980s which he denied; they will hope the end of his rule hastens the end of this regime.

For Iran’s ruling conservatives, the state funeral will be an occasion freighted with emotion; it will also be an opportunity to start sending their signals of continuity.

Another critical position which must be filled is the seat held by this middle-ranking cleric on the Assembly of Experts, the body empowered to choose the new supreme leader, when that far more consequential transition comes.

Image source, Reuters

President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several others are confirmed to have been killed in Sunday's helicopter crash in north-western Iran, state TV says.

Some Iranian media are reporting that President Ebrahim Raisi is dead, along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and the others on board the helicopter.

They include the Mehr and Tasnim news agencies.

However there has been no official confirmation of this.

Drone footage has been shared on Iranian state news agency IRNA's social media channels which the agency says shows the wreckage of President Raisi's helicopter.

The footage, shot by the Red Crescent, appears to show the tail of a helicopter next to a large patch of scorched earth on a hillside littered with debris.

Rescuers have said there is no sign of life at the site.

There is "no sign" of life coming from President Ebrahim Raisi's helicopter, state TV says.

Reuters has also reported that the helicopter was "completely burned" in the crash, citing an Iranian official.

"President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash... unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead," the official said.

Rescuers will reach the helicopter location in "a few minutes", the head of Iran's Red Crescent Society Pirhossein Kolivand has told state media.

He said that they were approximately 2km from where the hard landing is thought to have taken place.

Search teams have found the crash site of the helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi, state TV says.

The head of Iran's Red Crescent society has told state TV that the situation is not "good".

Bahman Kalbasi
BBC Persian in New York

Image source, Reuters

For those of us who lived in Iran in the late 1980s, the days leading up to the official announcement of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Islamic Republic, and the images of the funeral that followed are etched into our memory.

The Islamic Republic’s media apparatus prepared the ground by asking people to pray for the leader. Loyalists responded by gathering in mosques overnight. Finally at the crack of dawn the mood in those mosques shifted from praying for his health to mourning his loss. And then came the state broadcasting announcement at 07:00.

State media reports and the tone of the current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s speech in the last hours appear to be setting a similar stage - asking the public to pray, loyalists gathering at a square in Tehran to do so, and reassurances that the day-to-day function of the country’s affairs will not be impacted.

While we await clarity over what happened at the crash site, reading the tea leaves points to the regime preparing this familiar playbook.

Siavash Ardalan
BBC Persian senior reporter

Image source, Reuters

The cause of the helicopter crash is not yet known - but Iran has a poor air transport safety record.

This is at least partly the result of decades of US sanctions, which have severely weakened its aerial fleet.

President Raisi was on board a Bell 212 helicopter, state news agencies said. The model was made in the US and could not have been sold to Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Previous ministers of defence and transport, as well as commanders of Iran’s ground and air armed forces, have died in plane or helicopter crashes.

When reformers led Iran's government, they aimed to modernise the country's fleet of aircraft by negotiating a deal with the West that would see sanctions lifted in return for limiting Iran's sensitive nuclear activities and allowing in international inspectors

However, these efforts stalled when President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal and reimposed sanctions.

Reformers were subsequently opposed and mocked by hardliners, who insisted that Iran could rely on its domestic industries and foreign allies to improve aviation safety.

Earlier we reported that a Turkish drone that joined the search for Raisi's helicopter had identified a heat source.

The Bayraktar Akinci drone's route over rugged topography in north-western Iran has been visible on flight-tracking websites.

Some reaction now from the US, where a handful of lawmakers have addressed the helicopter crash in Iran.

Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said his discussions with US intelligence officials suggest "at this point there is no evidence of foul play" but he would "keep the monitoring the situation as it unfolds".

"It was very bad foggy weather in north-west Iran where the copter crashed, so it looks like an accident but it's still being fully investigated," he said at a news conference.

"Good riddance" was the reaction of Michael Waltz, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

"Raisi was a murderous human rights abuser before and during his Presidency," he wrote on X.

"If Raisi is dead, the world is now a safer & better place," Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida said on X.

"If he’s gone, I truly hope the Iranian people have the chance to take their country back from murderous dictators," he added.

The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the crash.

Image source, Reuters

Ebrahim Raisi is a hardline cleric close to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His election as president in 2021 consolidated the control of conservatives over every part of the Islamic Republic.

Born in 1960 in Mashhad, home to Iran's holiest Shia Muslim shrine, he followed in the footsteps of his father, a cleric, and started attended a seminary when he was 15.

He took part in protests against the Western-backed Shah, who was toppled in 1979, while a student and went on to become the deputy prosecutor in Tehran at just 25.

In the late 1980s, he sat on secret tribunals believed to have sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death in what humans rights group say constituted a crime against humanity.

Raisi succeeded Hassan Rouhani as president after a poll which saw many prominent moderate and reformist candidates barred and the majority of voters stay away.

He took power with Iran already facing multiple challenges but his time in office has been dominated by anti-government protests as well as the current war in Gaza.

Read the full profile here

Image source, Getty Images

A drone sent by Turkey to help in the search for President Raisi's helicopter has identified a source of heat, according to news agency Anadolu.

Footage from the Bayraktar Akinci high-altitude long-range drone released by the agency shows an aerial view of a landscape at night and a dark blotch on what appears to be a hillside.

The agency said the coordinates of the site had been shared with the Iranian authorities.

For Iran's conservatives, continuity is what matterspublished at 00:53 British Summer Time 20 May

00:53 BST 20 May

Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent

We do not know what has happened to Ebrahim Raisi, but if he has died this would have very little in the way of ramifications for Iran’s foreign or domestic policy.

President Raisi took care of the day-to-day running of Iran, but his powers were very much circumscribed.

In Iran, it is the supreme leader who sets the policy and who has the final say.

The president’s time in power has not been marked by any major new policy platforms, and so his legacy would not be seen as a consequential one.

What will be important for the country’s conservatives – who have been strengthening their grip on power across a wide range of institutions – will be to send a very clear and convincing message of continuity.

Russia is sending a rescue team to Iran to help with the search for President Raisi, according to Russian state media.

RIA Novosti reports that the team includes 47 specialist rescuers, a number of all-terrain vehicles, and a helicopter.

It said the equipment was being loaded and would be flown to Iranian city of Tabriz, to which the president was travelling at the time of the accident.

“Both helicopters and rescuers are ready to carry out the most difficult tasks at high altitudes,” the agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

“As soon as weather conditions, namely fog, allow the search and rescue operation to be resumed, our specialists will join the efforts.”

Shayan Sardarizadeh and Ghoncheh Habibiazad
BBC Verify and BBC Monitoring

Social media has been awash with false information following the news of an accident involving a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi.

A video of a helicopter crashing in a mountainous area, viewed 1.6m times, claims to show President Raisi's helicopter in Iran's East Azarbaijan province.

But BBC Verify has confirmed that the video dates back to July 2022, showing a border police rescue helicopter crashing, external in Gudauri, Georgia.

An image, viewed nearly 100,000 times, falsely claims to show wreckage of the helicopter carrying Raisi.

But the image appeared in a 2019 report about a helicopter crash in Morocco, external.

An unfounded rumour that claims Iran's state TV has suspended its normal programming, external to announce Raisi's death has also been widely shared.

However, state TV has not suspended its coverage, and continues to air updates on the ongoing search and rescue efforts to locate the helicopter.

A deleted tweet by Iran's Fars news agency, closely affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, shared an image of Raisi near a helicopter, claiming his helicopter had safely landed.

However, the image of Raisi was captured during rescue efforts after nationwide floods in July 2022, external, and the fate of the helicopter and those on board remains unknown.