BAKU: Azerbaijan said on Monday it was suspending work at its embassy in Iran, days after a gunman stormed the mission, killing one guard and wounding two others.
Iran has said the attack on Friday was motivated by personal reasons but Baku labelled it an act of terrorism.
“The operation of Azerbaijan’s embassy in Iran has been temporarily suspended following the evacuation of its staff and their family members from Iran,” Azerbaijani foreign ministry spokesman Ayxan Hacizada told AFP.
“That doesn’t mean that diplomatic ties had been severed,” he said, adding that Baku’s consulate general in the Iranian city of Tabriz was “up and running.”
In a phone call on Saturday with his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said he hoped “this violent act of terror would be thoroughly investigated.”
Tehran’s police said the attacker, who was arrested, was an Iranian man married to an Azerbaijani woman.
The United States condemned “unacceptable violence” and urged a prompt investigation. Russia’s foreign ministry said Moscow was “shocked” by the attack.
Iran is home to millions of Turkic-speaking, ethnic Azeris and it has long accused Azerbaijan of fomenting separatist sentiment inside its territory.
Relations between the two countries have traditionally been sour, with the former Soviet republic a close ally of Iran’s historical rival Turkiye.
Tehran also fears that Azerbaijani territory could be used for a possible offensive against Iran by Israel, a major supplier of arms to Baku.
Azerbaijan embassy in Iran suspends work after deadly attack
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Azerbaijan embassy in Iran suspends work after deadly attack
Kurds in Turkiye protest over Syria Aleppo offensive
- Several hundred people gathered in Diyarbakir while hundreds more joined a protest in Istanbul
- In the capital, Ankara, DEM lawmakers protested in front of the Turkish parliament
DIYARBAKIR, Turkiye: Protesters rallied for a second day in Turkiye’s main cities on Thursday to demand an end to a deadly Syrian army offensive against Kurdish fighters in Aleppo, an AFP correspondent said.
Several hundred people gathered in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkiye’s main Kurdish-majority city, while hundreds more joined a protest in Istanbul that was roughly broken up by riot police who arrested around 25 people, the pro-Kurdish DEM party said.
In the capital, Ankara, DEM lawmakers protested in front of the Turkish parliament, denouncing the targeting of Kurds in Aleppo as a crime against humanity.
The protesters demanded an end to the operation by Syrian government forces against the Kurdish-led SDF force in Aleppo, where at least 21 people have been killed in three days of violent clashes.
It was the worst violence in the northwestern city since Syria’s Islamist authorities took power a year ago. The fighting erupted as both sides struggled to implement a March agreement to integrate autonomous Kurdish institutions into the new Syrian state.
In Istanbul, hundreds of protesters waving flags braved heavy rain near Galata Tower to denounce the Aleppo operation under the watchful eye of hundreds of riot police, an AFP correspondent said.
But some of the slogans drew a sharp warning from the police, who moved to roughly break up the gathering and arrested some 25 people, DEM’s Istanbul branch said.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the police attack on the Rojava solidarity action in Sishane. This brutal intervention, oppression, and violence against our young comrades is unacceptable!” the party wrote on X, demanding the immediate release of those arrested.
At the Diyarbakir protest during the afternoon, protesters carried a huge portrait of the jailed PKK militant leader Abdullah Ocalan, an AFP video journalist reported.
“We urge states to act as they did for the Palestinian people, for our Kurdish brothers who are suffering oppression and hardship,” Zeki Alacabey, 64, told AFP in Diyarbakir.
Although Turkiye has embarked on a peace process with the PKK, it remains hostile to the SDF, which controls swathes of northeastern Syria, seeing it as an extension of the banned militant group and a major threat along its southern border.
It has repeatedly demanded that the SDF merge into the main Syrian military. A defense ministry official said on Thursday that Ankara was ready to “support” Syria’s operation against the Kurdish fighters if needed.
Demonstrators had already taken to the streets in several major Turkish cities with Kurdish majorities on Wednesday, including Diyarbakir and Van, according to images broadcast by the DEM.
