MAHE, Seychelles, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- An unarmed, remotely piloted U.S. Predator surveillance drone crashed Tuesday at an airport in Mahe, Seychelles, the U.S. Air Force said.
No one was injured when the MQ-9 Reaper aircraft crashed at 10:22 a.m. on a runway at Seychelles International Airport, the Air Force said. The cause of the crash was under investigation.
The incident came a little more than a week after a U.S. spy drone went down in northern Iran Dec. 4.
The U.S. Africa Command has been flying drones out of the Seychelles since 2009, searching for Somali pirates who often operate hundreds of miles off the Somali coast. ABC News said the Air Force took over the mission from the Navy in September.
Commercial freighters are often hijacked in the waters of East Africa, with ships' crews held for months, sometimes even years, until ransoms are paid to pirates.
Numerous countries, including the United States, provide navy vessels to patrol the waters off Somalia to stop pirates from seizing ships and hostages.
The Mahe airport reopened for normal traffic after debris was removed from the runway.
