Armenia raps Israel over alleged supply of drones to Azerbaijan: report

Armenian officials have remonstrated with Israel over its reported supply of weaponry to Azerbaijan after an Israeli-produced suicide drone deployed by Azerbaijani army killed seven Armenians last week, Haaretz reported Sunday.

The drone, identified by the The Washington Post as an Israeli Aerospace Industries Harop loitering munition, was filmed flying over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh, the site of clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

It hit a bus carrying “Armenian volunteers,” killing seven, according to Artsrun Hovhannisyan, a spokesman for Armenia’s Defense Ministry.

The Post report specified that "unlike, for instance, a Predator drone armed with a Hellfire missile, the Harop itself is the munition and destroys a target by ramming into it."

This month has seen the worst outbreak of violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorny Karabakh since the 1990s, with more than 90 people killed in four days of heavy fighting followed by sporadic clashes.

Armenia-backed separatists seized control of Nagorny Karabakh, an enclave within Azerbaijan's territory populated mainly by Christian ethnic Armenians, in an early 1990s war that claimed some 30,000 lives.