ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declared a day of mourning today, Monday, after Iranian state media confirmed President Ebrahim Raisi and other senior officials of the country had been killed in a helicopter crash in the country’s northwest. 

Iranian state media IRNA said Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and others had been found dead at the site of a helicopter crash after an hours-long search through a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s northwest. 

The Iranian president, 63, was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV said what it called a “hard landing” happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Later, state TV put it farther east near the village of Uzi, but details remained contradictory.

With Raisi were Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. One local government official used the word “crash,” but others referred to either a “hard landing” or an “incident.”

In a post on social media platform X, Sharif extended his “deepest condolences” and sypathies to the people of Iran, hoping they would recover from the tragedy with courage. 

“Pakistan will observe a day of mourning and the flag will fly at half mast as a mark of respect for President Raisi and his companions and in solidarity with Brotherly Iran,” Sharif wrote on X. 

The crash comes as the Middle East remains unsettled by Israel’s war on Gaza, during which Raisi under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel last month. Under Raisi, Iran enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels, further escalating tensions with the West as Tehran also supplied bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine and armed militia groups across the region.

Raisi was elected president at the second attempt in 2021, and since taking office ordered a tightening of morality laws, overseen a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests and pushed hard in nuclear talks with world powers.

In Iran’s dual political system, split between the clerical establishment and the government, it is the supreme leader rather than the president who has the final say on all major policies.

In April, Raisi arrived in Islamabad on a three-day official visit to Pakistan as the two Muslim neighbors sought to mend ties after unprecedented tit-for-tat military strikes earlier this year.

The Iranian president had held delegation-level meetings in the Pakistani capital as well as one-on-one discussions with Pakistan’s prime minister, president, army chief, Senate chairman and National Assembly speaker.

During the visit, Raisi had also overseen the signing of eight agreements between the two countries that covered different fields, including trade, science technology, agriculture, health, culture, and judicial matters.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar will attend a two-day Foreign Ministers Council meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on Monday in Kazakhstan’s Astana city, state media reported, where he is expected to hold bilateral meetings with counterparts. 

Founded in 2001, the SCO is a major trans-regional organization spanning South and Central Asia, with China, Russia, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan as its permanent members. The SCO member states collectively represent nearly half of the world’s population and a quarter of global economic output. 

The event will be attended by foreign ministers of the SCO member states, the SCO secretary-general and director of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) Executive Committee, the organization said. 

“Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar will represent Pakistan at two-day meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, beginning at Astana in Kazakhstan tomorrow,” the state-run Radio Pakistan said on Sunday. 

It said Dar would also hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts on the sidelines of the meeting. 

The SCO said one of the main items on the agenda will be the “comprehensive preparations” for the July meeting of the SCO Heads of States Council. During the foreign ministers’ meeting, the heads of the delegations will exchange views on international and regional agendas, security issues and the development of political, trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian cooperation within the SCO, the organization said. 

“Participants will also sign several resolutions regarding the final documents of the upcoming SCO summit and adopt a communique,” the SCO said. 

The SCO’s agenda of promoting peace and stability, and seeking enhanced linkages in infrastructure, economic, trade and cultural spheres, is aligned with Pakistan’s own vision of enhancing economic connectivity as well as peace and stability in the region. 

Since becoming a full member of the SCO in 2017, Pakistan has been actively contributing toward advancing the organization’s core objectives through its participation in various SCO mechanisms.

During his visit to China last week, Dar also met SCO Secretary-General Ambassador Zhang Ming and reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to the organization’s charter and its ideals, the Pakistani foreign ministry said in a statement.