Azerbaijan praises ‘very effective’ Israeli drones in fighting with Armenia

A top Azerbaijani official confirms his country has deployed Israeli-made military drones to combat areas in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, and praises Israel’s Harop drone in particular as “very effective.”

Israeli technology “helps Azerbaijan to provide security and safety to its nationals,” Hikmet Hajiyev, a top foreign policy adviser to President Ilham Aliyev, tells the Israeli news site Walla.

“Armenia tries to over-exaggerate the issue” of Israeli military aid, he says, but adds, “If Armenia is scared of the drones that Azerbaijan is using, Armenia should stop its imposed occupation.”

A side view of the Israel Aerospace Industries Harop drone at the Paris Air Show in 2013. (Wikipedia/Julian Herzog/CC BY)

Asked if the drones Azerbaijan has deployed to the front are Israeli made, Hajiyev replies, “Some of them, yes.”

He calls Israel Aerospace Industries’ Harop drone “very effective,” says they are used in a “kamikaze” capacity on the battlefield, and offers “a big ‘chapeau’ to the engineers who designed it.”

Heavy fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh continued for a fourth straight day today, in the biggest escalation of a decades-old conflict in years that has killed dozens and left scores of others wounded.

— AP contributed to this report.