South Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa has mourned the passing of his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and other officials in a helicopter crash on Sunday, describing the incident as an \u201cunthinkable tragedy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Raisi died together with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and seven other officials when their helicopter crashed in a mountainous and forested area of the country in poor weather.<\/p>\n
A total of nine people, including a provincial governor, were on board when the aircraft went down in northern Iran\u2019s East Azerbaijan province.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Monday, Ramaphosa said he was \u201cdeeply saddened\u201d by the air disaster that claimed the lives of Raisi, Amir-Abdollahian and others.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an extraordinary, unthinkable tragedy that has claimed a remarkable leader of a nation with whom South Africa enjoys strong bilateral relations and whom we were honoured to welcome to the BRICS fold in Johannesburg in 2023,\u201d Ramaphosa said.<\/p>\n
Iran is one of six new countries invited last year to join the BRICS group of emerging nations that previously comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.<\/p>\n
Other countries that became BRICS member states on 1 January 2024 are Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Argentina spurned the invitation to join BRICS, saying it was not the \u201copportune\u201d moment for Argentina to join as a full member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa has mourned the passing of his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi and other officials in a helicopter crash on Sunday, describing the incident as an \u201cunthinkable tragedy\u201d. Raisi died together with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and seven other officials when their helicopter crashed in a mountainous and forested area of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"APA","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,30],"tags":[218,2516,1257,122],"class_list":["post-11927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-ebrahim-raisi","tag-iran","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}