Alwaght- An assailant has tried to launch a knife attack on the residence of Iran’s ambassador to Austria in Vienna where he was killed by a security guard.
According to local police, the 26-year-old Austrian was killed while trying to enter the ambassador's residence in Vienna's Hietzing district on Sunday just before midnight after the guard shot him four times, after pepper spray failed to stop him.
The crime scene has been closed off by the police, who said the motive of the attacker is still unclear.
The Austrian police added that a security guard was injured in the attack and transported to hospital for treatment.
Iran has called for a speedy probe into the “suspicious” attempt.
“We hope Austrian police and government security authorities can reach the essential results in the investigation they have launched since last night and we can get a more precise report about the motivation and identity of the individual in the coming hours,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Monday.
Qassemi also said there are rumors that the assailant was a foreigner with Austrian citizenship but reiterated that “we have asked the Austrian government to look into the matter as soon as possible and pay more attention to the safety of Iranian diplomatic sites in the country.”
The attack came several hours after Iranian Ambassador to London Hamid Baeidinejad announced that he had been threatened with death by a member of an extremist religious group, which recently carried out an attack on the Islamic Republic's embassy in London.
A number of attackers scaled the wall of Iran's Embassy building in London on Friday and took down the Iranian flag.
According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA, British police did nothing to protect the compound during the attack.
Iran on Saturday summoned the British ambassador to Tehran over the attack on its diplomatic mission in London.
