Iran’s military says Raisi’s helicopter caught fire soon after crash and there was no sign of attack

Tehran: 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.

Raisi was buried in a tomb at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad on on Thursday. Mashhad long has been a base for Raisi. In 2016, Khamenei appointed Raisi to run the Imam Reza charity foundation as well as oversees the shrine. It is one of many bonyads, or charitable foundations, fueled by donations or assets seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

These foundations offer no public accounting of their spending and answer only to Iran’s supreme leader.

The Imam Reza charity, known as “Astan-e Quds-e Razavi” in Farsi, is believed to be one of the biggest in the country.

Analysts estimate its worth at tens of billions of dollars as it owns almost half the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city that’s about 750 kilometers (470 miles) east of Iran’s capital, Tehran.