Residents in southwestern Somalia said a suspected U.S. drone crashed Monday in a rebel-held village in the Gedo region.
Al-Shabaab, Somalia’s Islamic extremist insurgents, claimed on their radio station that their fighters have seized the crashed drone that carried six missiles. This has not been independently verified.
U.S. drones have killed several Al-Shabaab leaders in airstrikes in Somalia over the past year.
The U.S. government hasn’t yet commented on the reported drone crash.
In a separate development, a Somali police officer says a bomb killed a former Somali defence minister in Mogadishu Monday.
Capt. Mohamed Hussein says that a bomb hidden in a vehicle carrying Muhyadin Mohamed Haji was detonated in the heart of the capital, killing him and wounding another person. Haji was the defense minister in Somalia’s transitional government in 2008.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, however Al-Shabaab often carries out such attacks.
