Tehran (AP): The helicopter carrying Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi caught fire soon after it crashed into a mountain and there was no sign it was attacked, state media reported, citing the military's crash investigators.

The statement from the general staff of the armed forces in charge of investigating the crash was read on state television late Thursday. The first statement on the crash did not lay blame but said more details would come after further investigation.

The crash Sunday killed Raisi, the country's foreign minister and six other people.

The general staff's statement said the communications between the control tower and the crew of the helicopter before the crash contained nothing suspicious. It said the last communication of the crashed helicopter was between it and two helicopters accompanying it some 90 seconds before the crash.

There was no sign of anything shot at the helicopter and its flight path did not change, the statement said.

The aging Bell helicopter went down in a foggy, remote mountainous region of Iran's northwest on Sunday. The crash site was discovered Monday morning with all eight on board dead.

Raisi was buried in a tomb at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad on Thursday.

 

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Bareilly (UP), Nov 24: Three people died when their car fell into the Ramganga river from a partially constructed bridge here on Sunday, police said, adding that they suspect the driver was misled by its navigation system into taking the unsafe route.

The accident occurred around 10 am on the Khalpur-Dataganj road when the victims were travelling from Bareilly to Dataganj in the Badaun district, they said.

"Earlier this year, floods had caused the front portion of the bridge to collapse into the river, but this change had not been updated in the system," Circle Officer Ashutosh Shivam said.

The driver was using a navigation system and did not realise that the bridge was unsafe, driving the car off the damaged section, the police said.

There were no safety barriers or warning signs on the approach to the damaged bridge, leading to the fatal accident, Shivam said.

Upon receiving information, police teams from Faridpur, Bareilly and Dataganj police station rushed to the spot. They recovered the vehicle and the bodies from the river, Shivam added.

The circle officer said that bodies had been sent for post-mortem. Further investigation into the matter is underway.