Enraged Somalis tried three times to kill the American helicopter pilot captured by gunmen in the capital Mogadishu on Sunday, the pilot said yesterday at the house where he is being held hostage.

In his first interview since his capture during a 15-hour battle, warrant-officer Mike Durant, aged 31, told the Guardian and the French newspaper Liberation how he was dragged through the streets writhing in agony from the injuries he sustained when his Black Hawk helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.

'I think I was dragged out of the helicopter by one of the crew. I think everyone was alive when we crashed. As soon as we crashed there was a lot of gunfire and we were trying to protect ourselves. The shooting went on for about 20 minutes.

'I couldn't move because of my leg and back injuries. And I was lying right beside the aircraft, so I couldn't see anybody. I could hear one of the crew chiefs. He was hurt very bad. I could hear him moaning.'

Lying on a bed in the district of Mogadishu where he was brought down, Durant's bloodshot eyes stared blankly as the terror of his capture flashed through his mind. Outside, in a sunny courtyard, a woman was hanging out washing as her children chased each other with sticks.

'We lay there on the ground beside the aircraft and I saw people coming out of tin shacks trying to get to us. I kept shooting at them, but then I ran out of ammunition. There was a large group of people. They grouped together on the other side of the aircraft, shooting. Then I heard the other crew saying: I'm hit. Then the people got to me and started to hit me.'

They pulled off his clothes and tied a rag around his head before dragging him out on to a main street. 'They held me up in the air. Some people would break through the crowd and hit me. But there were other people shouting at them, it seemed as if they wanted them to stop the beating.'

After 10 minutes he was put in a truck and driven away as people screamed at him. He was taken to a house and left for 30 minutes, by which time darkness had fallen. He was taken to a second house where a Somali cameraman filmed him.

'They chained me up in a room. The chain was like a dog chain, with a small lock on it. In the morning somebody came when I was chained up. I saw the door open and the barrel of a gun - I think it was an AK-47 - come round the door. I didn't see the gunman. He opened fire and then disappeared. The bullets hit the floor and I was hit by shrapnel which I had to pull out of my arm.'

That night he was unchained and moved to another house. 'As they were moving me I thought I was going to be killed. On the way here we stopped at roadblocks where the people who were taking me had to explain to the gunmen what was going on. They gave me some spaghetti and milk and then left me in the car for about an hour and I thought: this is it. But instead they brought me here,' he said.

Each of the three mornings he has spent at the house, he has been visited by a doctor to look at his broken right leg, facial injuries and bullet wounds. On a bedside table were tablets, mineral water and cotton wool.

A newspaper was on the narrow bed as he fumbled with the controls of a small radio listening to bulletins about the aftermath of the battle which brought him here.

'I have asked them a lot about what they intend to do with me. Initially they said they were trying to work a deal in exchange for 24 of their people who are held. I heard on the radio that that won't happen. It's not what I want to hear, but I understand it. The SNA (Mohamed Farah Aideed's Somali National Alliance) want to show the world that they're not barbarians.

'Everybody wants it to calm down. People are angry because they see civilians getting killed. I don't think anyone who doesn't live here can understand what is going on here. Americans mean well. We did try to help. Things have gone wrong.

'My biggest fear is that the people living around this part of town will find out that I'm here and try to kill me.'

His first captors were those living in the houses crushed when the helicopter crashed. But Durant is now firmly in the hands of leading members of the SNA.

In the past three weeks more than 30 SNA members have been captured by US troops and are being held at the UN compound. 'I look like Rocky,' he said, as he looked for the first time into the mirror which he asked to have before agreeing to have his photograph taken. 'And that's a bad thing. Rocky lost.'

His eyes filled with tears as he thought about his fellow crew members. 'The first thing I was told was that the people had killed them all. Chopped them up. I consider myself lucky,' he said, as he thought of his one-year-old son Joey and his wife Lorie who were expecting to go to his sister's wedding in Washington today.

Durant, born in the New Hampshire town of Berlin, joined the army after high school. He is married with a baby son.

'I regret the rest of the crew. They don't have a chance to see their families again. They were the greatest Americans.'

Mark Huband, with a French correspondent, yesterday became the first foreign journalists to see Mike Durant since his helicopter was downed last week. Huband, the Guardian's east Africa correspondent is one of the few remaining journalists in Somalia.