Somali Shabaab rebels say they shot down US drone

By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Insurgents of the Somali al Shabaab group shot down a U.S. drone aircraft flying over the southern port of Kismayu on Monday and were searching for the wreckage, an insurgent spokesman said.

U.S. commandos killed a 'most wanted' al Qaeda suspect allied to al Shabaab last month in a helicopter raid in the rebel-held south of the failed state.

"We fired at an American plane spying for information over Kismayu. Our forces targeted the plane and shot it and we saw the plane burning. We think it fell into the sea," said Sheikh Hassan Yacqub, spokesman for al Shabaab in Kismayu.

"We are still searching for it," he told Reuters.

Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, spokesman of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, said all its unmanned aerial vehicles had been safely recovered but could not give further details.

Al Shabaab, which Washington says is al Qaeda's proxy in Somalia, controls much of the south and centre where it is waging an insurgency against the fragile U.N.-backed government.

Residents in one small central town, Galhareeri, said al Shabaab fighters destroyed a mosque, the grave of a revered Sufi Muslim cleric and a Sufi Muslim university there on Sunday.

The hardline group has targeted Sufi holy sites and religious leaders in the past, saying their practices conflict with the insurgents' strict interpretation of Islamic law.