Sunday, June 02, 2013
An official in the semiautonomous Puntland region of Somalia says a surveillance drone has crashed. Ports
and Anti-piracy Minister Saeed Mohamed Rage said Saturday the drone
crashed in Quaw village 20 kilometers (12miles) west of the port city of
Bossasso.
The United States military flies aerial
surveillance drones from Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles to
monitor piracy off the East African coast, but Rage said it is not clear
whose drone crashed. The U.S. also flies drones that occasionally fire
at Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels in south and central Somalia. The
al-Shabab rebels Tuesday posted pictures on Twitter of what they claimed
was a surveillance drone that had crashed.
Puntland, in northern Somalia, has escaped the decades of conflict seen in the country's south and central regions.