Ilham Aliyev

There are plenty of Iranians who are celebrating the unexpected death of the president, who has earned a reputation as a brutal, hardline executor of Supreme Leader Khamenei's will. The daughters of Minoo Majidi - a 62-year-old Iranian woman who was one of hundreds of people shot dead by security services during the nationwide fallout following the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 - shared a video to social media raising a glass to the president's demise. That clip was followed swiftly by two more Iranian women, Mersedeh Shahinkar and Sima Moradbeigi, dancing and smiling in response to the news Raisi's helicopter had plunged into the mountainside. Shahinkar was blinded by the security forces' brutality amid the 2022 protests, while Moradbeigi lost the use of one of her arms after an armed guard blasted her elbow apart from point-blank range. A slew of other videos shared to social media appeared to show people setting off fireworks in the streets of Tehran in celebration - though these clips are yet to be verified.

It comes as state media claimed that allied Russia is sending a 50-man specialist mountain rescue unit to assist the search. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations confirmed it in a Telegram post. Rescuers were last night struggling to locate the Iranian president after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in bad weather. An Iranian official said the lives of president Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, among others, were 'at risk'.

Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia's prime minister, said the country has plans to look after up to 40,000 refugees, but that up to 120,000 people will leave the country due to the 'danger of ethnic cleansing.' Nearly 6,700 people arrived in Armenia after leaving the Nagorno-Karabakh region, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan , in the two days since the Armenian government began accepting refugees on Sunday