In brief: Drone tracking piracy crashes

NAIROBI, Kenya – An American military drone that had been used to monitor piracy off the East African coast has crashed at an airport on the island nation of Seychelles during a routine patrol, officials said.

The U.S. Embassy in Mauritius said the unmanned U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper was not armed and that Tuesday’s crash caused no injuries. The crash sparked a fire that was quickly extinguished.

Lina Laurence of Seychelles’ civilian aviation authority said the drone developed engine problems minutes into its flight and needed to land as soon as possible Tuesday morning.

“But due to its accelerated landing speed, the aircraft was unable to stop before the runway’s end,” Laurence said.

The embassy’s statement said the cause of the crash is being investigated.

“It has been confirmed that this drone was unarmed and its failure was due to mechanical reasons,” Laurence said.

The U.S. military and the civilian aviation authority of Seychelles have coordinated to remove the debris, officials said.

The MQ-9 Reaper is a medium-to-high-altitude unmanned aircraft system with sensors that can provide real-time data. The Seychelles-based MQ-9s, which are used to monitor piracy activities in and around the Indian Ocean, don’t carry weapons, though they have the capability to do so.

Arsonists blamed in mosque fire

JERUSALEM – Israeli police said arsonists have torched a mosque in central Jerusalem.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Hebrew-language graffiti was left at the unused building. This suggests Jewish extremists were responsible for the attack.

The Israeli military said vehicles were also torched and hate graffiti was spray-painted in the West Bank town of Nablus and Qalqilya.

Today’s incidents came just a day after Jewish radicals broke into an Israeli military base in the West Bank, damaging vehicles, setting fires and slightly injuring a senior commander.

Human rights activist leads Tunisia

BEIRUT – Promising an end to decades of autocracy, a veteran human rights activist on Tuesday was sworn in as president of Tunisia, the country that inspired the Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

Moncef Marzouki, who was imprisoned and exiled for years for opposing former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, said during a ceremony in Tunis, the capital, he would be a leader “for all Tunisians.”

“Other nations are watching us as a laboratory of democracy,” he said.

Marzouki, 66, who heads the secular center-left Congress for the Republic party, was elected Monday by a ruling coalition dominated by the moderate Islamist Nahda party, which won the largest share of seats in an assembly charged with appointing a transitional government and drafting a new constitution.