Contact has been made with a passenger and a crew member of the Iranian President’s helicopter, an official has told state TV.
The unnamed official said contact has been made on several occasions.
‘Located’ in this context means the helicopter’s location has been determined, but rescue teams have not visually or physically encountered it yet!
Iranian Deputy President for Executive Affairs Mohsen Mansouri: Two of the passengers of this flight communicated with the rescue forces meaning that the accident was probably of low severity.
Another promising point is that the location of the accident has been identified by the Information and Communications Technology Ministry in a radius of 2 km.
According to him: “On several occasions, communication has been established with one of the helicopter passengers and one of the helicopter staff.
“We are following up to a radius of two kilometers from the incident; I hope the good news reaches the people.”
Sky News Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall says this marks a “really significant development”.
“It suggests there could be survivors and perhaps they are pretty close to the crash site, which again would be a moment of hope,” he adds.