Israel's defence ministry has halted a company's exports of "suicide" drones to Azerbaijan in the midst of an ongoing investigation, newru.co.il reported on August 29.

Aeronautics Defence Systems (ADS) stands accused of targeting live targets in Nagorno-Karabakh, the breakaway region over which Azerbaijan has been in conflict for almost three decades, during a demonstration of the capabilities of the drones earlier this year.

According to the Maariv newspaper,ADS sent a team to Baku in July to demonstrate its Orbiter 1K unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and flew it into an "enemy target" on a "suicide" mission. The Israeli defence ministry confirmed it was investigating the complaint, but refused to elaborate. It said that "as a rule, the defence ministry does not comment on issues concerning defence exports". 

Israel is the world's largest exporter of UAVs; according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the country accounted for 41% of all UAV exports between 2001 and 2011.

Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh confirmed that they were attacked on July 7 by a drone, and that two soldiers were slightly injured in the incident. Baku has become one of Israel's foremost arms trade partners in recent years, having imported some $5bn worth of Israeli military equipment thus far and even signing up for the purchase of an Iron Dome anti-missile system in December 2016.

Azerbaijan's efforts to boost its military capabilities, which are also fuelled by imports from other arms manufacturers like Russia and by domestic production, are due to its longstanding conflict with neighbouring Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. The region is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, but it is populated by ethnic Armenians. A bloody war fought over it in the early 1990s ended in a ceasefire, but no resolution to the conflict has been agreed. The ceasefire has been repeatedly violated in recent years, and skirmishes at the border have become increasingly frequent.

ADS signed contracts to export drones worth $20mn to Azerbaijan in 2017-2018.