Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (C) speaks during a news briefing at a hospital in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 27, 2023. The Iranian foreign minister on Friday condemned the deadly armed attack on Azerbaijan's embassy in Tehran, saying the two countries should not let their ties be affected by the incident. Photo: Xinhua

 

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (2nd L) visits an Azerbaijani embassy's guard wounded in an attack, at a hospital in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 27, 2023. The Iranian foreign minister on Friday condemned the deadly armed attack on Azerbaijan's embassy in Tehran, saying the two countries should not let their ties be affected by the incident. Photo: Xinhua

 

The Iranian foreign minister on Friday condemned the deadly armed attack on Azerbaijan's embassy in Tehran, saying the two countries should not let their ties be affected by the incident.

In a phone call with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also proposed close cooperation between the two countries' security bodies to investigate the attack that killed an embassy employee and injured two others.

For his part, Bayramov welcomed Amir-Abdollahian's proposal for a joint investigation into the incident.

In a Twitter post on Friday, Mohammad Jamshidi, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's deputy chief of staff for political affairs, said Raisi had ordered a comprehensive investigation into the armed attack.

On Friday morning, an assailant went to Azerbaijan's embassy with a Kalashnikov rifle and started shooting, killing one employee and injuring two others, said Tehran police Chief Hossein Rahimi.

The assailant entered the embassy with his two young children, he added.

Mohammad Shahriari, the caretaker chairman of Tehran Province's criminal court, said initial investigation showed personal issues were behind the attack, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

According to Shahriari, the attacker claimed that his wife went to the embassy in April 2022 and had never returned home, and the assailant had gone to the embassy on numerous occasions looking for his wife but never received any response.

The attacker said he believed that his wife was in the embassy but did not want to meet him, Shahriari added.

Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry identified the victim as a guard, who had served as the head of security at the embassy.