Azerbaijan’s State Security Service, SSS, announced on Friday that it foiled an Iranian terror attack targeting a number of strategic facilities and Jewish community in capital Baku. The announcement follows Iran’s drone attacks that injured four civilians in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave on Thursday.
In a statement circulated in the state television, the SSS said it stopped Iran from “committing terror attacks” against Azerbaijan, namely the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that takes Caspian hydrocarbons to European markets, the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, a leader of the Mountain Jews religious community and the "Ashkenazi" synagogue. According to SSS, Iran’s intelligence agency, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as IRGC, planned “series of terrorist and intelligence operations”, assigning local operatives to conduct surveillance, acquire weapons, and secure transportation.
According to the statement, the IRGC smuggled the explosives to the country by Iranian nationals in coordination with Azerbaijani accomplices. Authorities reported that more than 7.7 kilograms of C-4 explosive material were discovered inside a container located near the settlement of Shikhov in Sabail district. In a separate finding in the Garadagh district, investigators uncovered additional explosive devices, among them a remotely operated bomb assessed to have a potential blast impact covering an area roughly 250–300 metres in radius.
Several individuals were detained in connection to terror plot. Four accomplices were sentenced to six years and six months in prison, while several others are under arrest for preparing the attempted assassination or illegally possessing explosives and firearms.
The SSU identified IRGC officer, Colonel Ali Asgar Bordbar Sherami, as a key organiser. The announcement came after Iran’s drone strikes that landed on an airports and near a school in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic bordering Iran. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev described the attack as a “terror act”, pledged to respond to the injuring of four civilians. In response to the attack, Baku also recalled its diplomats from Tehran and put the army in a state of alert.
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