Two days after a gunman shot dead a security guard of Azerbaijan’s embassy in Iran’s capital Tehran and wounded two other people in an attack Baku branded an act of terrorism, Azerbaijan evacuated its embassy staff and family members from Iran on Sunday evening.
Azerbaijani media reported that a total of 53 people boarded the special plane that landed at Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku. Onboard was also the body of the chief of the embassy security staff, Orkhan Askerov, who was killed in the attack.
Askerov was shot dead during the incident on Friday in which the assailant Yasin Hosseinzadeh, who was immediately arrested, barged inside the embassy premises armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and opened fire in an attack that was motivated by personal and family-related problems, as Tehran’s police chief Hossein Rahimi told reporters briefing them on the preliminary investigation.
Despite the prompt reaction of the police in Tehran and Iranian authorities condemning Friday’s incident, the Azeri foreign ministry summoned Iran’s ambassador in Baku after the attack to demand justice.
Even though Iranian authorities argued that the gunman appeared to have had a personal and not a political motive, Azerbaijan media portrayed the incident as a terror attack with the media outlet Trend News Agency reporting on Friday that the assailant was related to Iran’s special services and a member of the Revolutionary Guard.
It also claimed that Iranian security forces guarding the Azerbaijan Embassy did not try to stop Hosseinzadeh’s attack.
Iranian state media, meanwhile, reported that Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi sent his condolences to Azerbaijan and the dead man’s family and called for a comprehensive investigation of the incident.
The ministry failed to give further details, including whether the embassy would continue to function considering the fact that the incident came amid increased tensions between the two countries over the treatment of Iran’s large ethnic Azeri minority and Baku’s decision to appoint this month its first-ever ambassador to Israel.
Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency, meanwhile, reported that the Azerbaijani embassy shall continue with its operation, albeit with a smaller diplomatic staff, citing an informed source in the Foreign Ministry.
