AZERBAIJAN’S AIR FORCE CHIEF KILLED

Aljazeera.net
Feb 11 2009
Qatar

The head of Azerbaijan’s air force has been shot dead outside his
home in the capital Baku, an interior ministry spokesman has said.

Lieutenant General Rail Rzayev, who died in a hospital after being
shot in the head, is the most senior official to have been killed in
Azerbaijan since the country’s war with neighbouring Armenia in 1990.

Sadiq Gozalov, the interior ministry spokesman, said military
prosecutors would be probing Rzayev’s killing on Wednesday.

He said he had no information regarding a possible motive for the
shooting.

Oil rich Azerbaijan is part of the strategically important but
fragile South Caucasus where Russia and the US are still competing
for influence.

The ex-Soviet republic hosts a pipeline pumping Caspian Sea oil to
world markets.

Azerbaijan is locked in a dispute with Armenia over the
Nagorno-Karabakh region where ethnic Armenian separatists threw off
Azeri rule in a 1990s war that killed about 35,000 people.

The two countries are technically still at war.

Rzayev headed Azerbaijan’s air force since 1992.