An official in the semiautonomous Puntland region of Somalia says a surveillance drone has crashed.
Ports and Anti-piracy Minister Saeed Mohamed Rage today said the drone crashed in Qaw village 20 kilometres (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 US also flies drones that occasionally fire at Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels in south and central Somalia. The al-Shabab rebels on 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.
