Iran police probe Swiss diplomat's death after 'fall'

Iranian police have announced an investigation into the death of a Swiss diplomat whose body a rescue official said was found Tuesday morning at the foot of a tower block.

"Specialised police units are in the process of examining" the circumstances around the death of a "52-year-old Swiss citizen employed by the Swiss embassy in Tehran," the national police said in a brief online statement.

Mojtaba Khaledi, spokesman for the national rescue service, said that the body was found in the morning after the diplomat "fell from a (residential) tower in Kamranieh," a northern district of Tehran.

Khaledi told AFP that the diplomat lived in the tower block and had fallen from the seventeenth floor.

In a message to AFP's Geneva office, Switzerland's foreign ministry confirmed that "a Swiss employee of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran died in a fatal incident on Tuesday".

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The Swiss embassy in Iran was in touch with local authorities over the matter, the ministry added.

The Swiss embassy handles US interests in Iran, since ties between Washington and Tehran were cut in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

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