The embassy's chief of security was shot dead, and two other staff were wounded. The attack comes amid Azerbaijan's increasingly strained relations with Iran and blossoming friendship with Iran's archrival Israel.
The surviving popularity of the komuz as a living instrument, rather than a museum artifact, and the flourishing tradition of Kyrgyz folk music is in no small way thanks to Malik Alikeyev, who died on January 17.
The drills included a crossing of the river that forms the Azerbaijan-Iran border, mirroring the threat that Iran’s armed forces had made weeks earlier.