BAKU, April 6. /TASS/. Four staff members of the Iranian Embassy in Baku were declared personae non gratae and ordered to leave the territory of Azerbaijan within 48 hours, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reported on Thursday.

"On April 6, Iranian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Seyed Abbas Mousavi was summoned to the Foreign Ministry. <...> It was brought to the ambassador's attention that four employees of the embassy were declared personae non gratae due to activities outside the realm of their diplomatic status and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961. These employees are obliged to leave the territory of Azerbaijan within 48 hours," the statement said.

According to the Foreign Ministry, the diplomats communicated to the Iranian ambassador "strong dissatisfaction with his country's recent provocative activities against Azerbaijan."

Relations between Baku and Tehran deteriorated after an armed attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Iran in January of this year, in which the head of the diplomatic mission’s security team was killed and two colleagues were wounded. After the incident, the Azerbaijani Embassy suspended diplomatic activities and its staff and their family members were evacuated to Azerbaijan. Baku is also against the large-scale military drills recently organized by Tehran on the border with Azerbaijan, and says that Iran was involved in the assassination attempt on Azerbaijani deputy Fazil Mustafa at the end of March.

In recent months, Azerbaijani law enforcement agencies have carried out a number of operations to detain people accused of spying and subversive activities in the country for the benefit of Iran.