Epress.am News from Armenia
Azerbaijan’s defense ministry has not yet commented on the reportedly Azerbaijani unmanned military aircraft that was shot down by Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian armed forces.
As reported by Novosti-Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry has not responded to calls made to their office.
Earlier, the defense ministry had declared that Azerbaijan has in its arsenal at least 60 Israeli and locally made UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), which were on display during the June 2011 military parade on the anniversary of Azerbaijan’s armed forces.
Recall, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army said in a statement that it took down the drone outside Vazgenashen village in the Karabakh region of Martuni on the morning of Sept. 12.
It further said that fragments of the destroyed aircraft are at the disposal of the Defense Army’s relevant services.
Armenian defense ministry press spokesperson Davit Karapetyan, confirming the information about the downed drone, also noted that Armenia will display its own UAVs during the military parade dedicated to the country’s 20 years of independence, which is set to take place in Yerevan on Sept. 21.
According to RFE/RL’s Armenian service, Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have previously not claimed to have shot down air targets since a May 1994 truce that halted their bitter war for Karabakh. The reported downing of an Azerbaijan unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could therefore add to growing fears of renewed large-scale fighting between the two sides.