Iran's president, Ebrahim Raisi, is just the latest leader to die in a helicopter crash. Raisi and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian died on Sunday when the helicopter they were traveling in crashed in a mountainous area near the city of Jolfa in northwestern Iran.
Here's a brief look at some other prominent figures who have died in helicopter crashes:
Ukraine
A helicopter carrying senior Ukrainian officials, including the minister of internal affairs, Denys Monastyrsky, crashed in January 2023 in a suburb of the capital, Kiev, killing more than a dozen people, including other key figures of the leadership in time of war.
Monastyrsky was a political ally of President Volodymyr Zelensky and the incident, which occurred near an elementary school, is believed to have been an accident.
Kenya
Last month, Kenya's army chief, General Francis Omondi Ogolla, died when the military helicopter he was traveling in crashed in the west of the country. Other officials were also killed.
It was not the first such death involving a prominent Kenyan. In 2012, George Saitoti – whose roles included finance minister, education minister, acting foreign minister and vice president – died when the police helicopter he was traveling in crashed in a forest west of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.
Sudan
In 2005, a helicopter carrying John Garang, who for decades had led the country's rebellion against the Sudanese government, died in a helicopter crash in northern Uganda. He was flying to southern Sudan.
Mr. Garang had been installed as Sudan's vice president a few weeks earlier, after playing a key role in the peace deal that ended that country's civil war. His swearing-in drew more than a million people to the streets of Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.
Garang had led a rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which had fought since 1983 to overthrow the Sudanese government. South Sudan finally became a nation in 2011.
Others
Many other notable people have also died in helicopter crashes. These include basketball star Kobe Bryant, who died in 2020 in California; Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of English Premier League football club Leicester City, killed in 2018 in an accident outside the stadium; and Aleksandr I. Lebed, a Soviet paratroop commander who later played a crucial role in the birth of Russian democracy, who died in southern Siberia in 2002.