Reuters/Mogadishu

Somali insurgents shot down a US drone aircraft flying yesterday over the southern port of Kismayu and were searching for the wreckage, an insurgent spokesman said.

Last month, US commandos killed a most wanted Al Qaeda suspect allied to Somalia’s Shebaab rebels 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 the Shebaab group in Kismayu. “We are still searching for it.”

Shebaab, which Washington says is Al Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia, controls much of the country’s south and central regions where it is waging a insurgency against the fragile UN-backed government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.

Kismayu residents routinely report suspected unmanned US spy planes, believed to be launched from warships in the Indian Ocean, flying above the port.

Residents in one small central town, Galhareeri, said Shebaab fighters also destroyed a mosque, the grave of a revered Sufi Muslim cleric and a Sufi Muslim university there on Sunday, after shooting in the air to drive away local protesters.

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

“They destroyed the Sheikh Ali Ibaar’s grave and our mosque. They also knocked down our Islamic university,” elder Hassan Ali said by telephone. “We are now just squatting among the trees on the outskirts of the town. We do not know where to flee.”

Fighting in Somalia has killed 19,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven another 1.5mn from their homes.

A spokesman for Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, a moderate Sufi militia group that is battling Shebaab in central regions, denounced the desecration of the holy sites in Galhareeri.

“We strongly condemn al Shebaab for its evil acts,” said Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Abu Yusuf. “They are notorious for destroying great graves in places where they even just spend a couple of nights. But we have not planned to take action yet.”

Shebaab has shocked many Somalis, who are traditionally moderate Muslims, with its stern version of Shariah.

Al Shebaab fighters have also banned movies in territory under their control, as well as forbidding musical telephone ringtones, dancing at weddings and playing or watching soccer.

Some residents, though, give the rebels credit for restoring a degree of law and order to parts of the country.

In the capital Mogadishu, police yesterday displayed the body of a foreign gunman who appeared to be Arab and was killed on Sunday during a Shebaab attack on government forces.

“You see this dead Arab. He was among the members of Al Qaeda who came from other countries just to destroy Somalia,” police spokesman Abdullahi Barise told reporters, standing over the corpse of a light-skinned man with several bullets wounds.

Shebaab have urged foreign jihadists to join their battle against what they describe as Somalia’s apostate government.