Syed Zafar Mehdi and Ceyhun Alizade
27 January 2023•Update: 28 January 2023
ANKARA
At least one person was killed and two others injured after an armed assailant attacked Azerbaijan's Embassy in Tehran on Friday using an automatic weapon, officials said.
The incident took place at around 8.30 a.m. local time (0500GMT) when the armed man opened fire at the picket of embassy guards in northern Tehran, according to local sources.
The head of the embassy's security services was killed in the attack while two guards were injured.
The attacker was immediately arrested by security forces, Tehran's police chief Hossein Rahimi told media persons at the scene of the incident, confirming the death of one person.
He said a probe has been ordered into the incident, noting that preliminary investigations suggest that the motive of the attack was "personal and family-related problems" and the attacker had entered the embassy with two young children.
Some local reports said the attacker was a 50-year-old man accompanied by two children -- a 14-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy -- whose identity remains unknown.
A statement by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said the armed assailant "destroyed the guard post with a Kalashnikov automatic weapon," killed the head of the embassy security, and injured two others.
Their condition, the statement noted, was stable.
Mohammad Shahriari, a criminal prosecutor of Tehran, was quoted as saying by the judiciary-affiliated Mizan News that a car stopped in front of the embassy on Friday morning and entered the embassy premises after the occupant attacked the security guards.
In the preliminary investigation, he said, the accused claimed that his wife went to the embassy in April last year and did not return. Despite repeated visits to the embassy to seek her whereabouts, he did not receive any response.
On Friday morning, the assailant decided to go to the embassy with a Kalashnikov rifle, according to his claim to the police.
Iran and Azerbaijan share a 765-kilometer (475-mile) border, and Iran is also home to a large ethnic Azerbaijani population.
Meanwhile, Nasser Kanaani, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson, strongly condemned the attack.
In a statement, Kanaani expressed condolences for the family of the embassy security official who was killed in the attack, adding that the incident is being investigated.
"On the special order of the country's political and security authorities, the issue with high priority and sensitivity is being investigated in order to determine the dimensions of this action and the motive of the assailant," he said in the statement.
The spokesperson, however, noted that the preliminary investigation points to a "personal motive" in the attack, adding that more details would be shared when the investigation is complete.
