Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed dead

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in a mountainous area of northwest Iran.

Rescuers found the burned remains of the aircraft on Monday morning after the president and his foreign minister had been missing for more than 12 hours.

"President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash," a senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

Live updates - Iranian president killed in crash

Iran's Mehr news agency reported "all passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred".

State TV said images showed it had smashed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.

"President Raisi's helicopter was completely burned in the crash... unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead," an official told Reuters.

As the sun rose, rescuers saw the wreckage from around 1.25 miles, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told state media.

Drone footage appears to show the tail of the helicopter and scattered debris.

Iranian news agency IRNA said the president was flying in an American-made Bell 212 helicopter.

Mr Raisi, 63, who was seen as a frontrunner to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran's supreme leader, was travelling back from Azerbaijan where he had opened a dam with the country's president.

Iran's foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, also died in the crash.

The governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards were also said to have been on board when the helicopter crashed in fog on Sunday.

Iranian media initially described it as a "hard landing".