DUBAI, May 22. /TASS/. Iranian army drones detected the crash site of the helicopter that carried President Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Republic’s General Staff reported on Wednesday.

"Early in the morning on Monday, drones of the Iranian armed forces that were recalled from their mission in the northern part of the Indian Ocean together with ground rescue forces detected the exact helicopter crash site," the news agency Tasnim quoted the General Staff as saying.

The drone sent by the Turkish side to the presumed crash site "could not transmit the exact coordinates of the helicopter wreckage scene due to the absence of necessary terrain identification equipment because of clouds" and returned to Turkey, the General Staff said.

On May 19, a helicopter carrying the Iranian president crashed in Iran's East Azerbaijan Province. Among those on board were Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, Governor of East Azerbaijan Province Malek Rahmati, and Mohammad Ali Al-e-Hashem, imam of Friday Prayer in Tabriz. Head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society Hossein Kolivand said that all the passengers and the helicopter crew had died in the crash.

Turkish Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said on May 20 that an Akinci drone sent to the crash site discovered the wreckage and transmitted data on the death of all passengers.