US drone goes down in Afghanistan

An unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the US Air Force has crashed at an airfield in Afghanistan’s southern province of Kandahar.

US Captain Bryan Bouchard said in a statement on Sunday that the MQ-9 Reaper drone went down at Kandahar Airfield.

He added that US Air Force authorities are investigating the cause of the crash, “but hostile fire was not a factor.”

On November 24, 2015, a surveillance drone belonging to the US-led NATO crashed in Afghanistan’s central province of Parwan. The Taliban militant group claimed it had brought downed the unmanned aircraft.

Just ten day earlier, another US unmanned aerial vehicle crashed in a remote mountainous area south of Kabul.

The United States regularly uses drones for airstrikes and spying missions in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border. Washington has also been conducting targeted killings through remotely-controlled armed drones in Somalia and Yemen.