Snatch and Grab

Stinging from the loss of friends and battle brothers on October 3rd, the Rangers and Team Delta soldiers wanted to finish the job. A little more than a month after the battle in Mogadishu, Task Force Ranger learned the location …

1993-11-09

LOF02

Stinging from the loss of friends and battle brothers on October 3rd, the Rangers and Team Delta soldiers wanted to finish the job. A little more than a month after the battle in Mogadishu, Task Force Ranger learned the location of Aidid's headquarters. Hidden in a small village west of Somalia 's capital, the headquarters would be located, and then assaulted. This was the type of operation for which the Americans had trained, a classic snatch and grab.

Mogadishu, Somalía

The Battle of Mogadishu, also known as the Black Hawk Down incident, was part of Operation Gothic Serpent. It was fought on 3–4 October 1993, in Mogadishu, Somalia, between forces of the United States, supported by UNOSOM II, against the forces of the Somali National Alliance (SNA) and citizens of south Mogadishu. The battle was part of the broader Somali Civil War that had begun in 1991. The United Nations had initially become involved to provide food aid to alleviate starvation in the south of the country, but in the months preceding the battle, had shifted the mission to establishing democracy and restoring a central government. Seven months after the deployment of U.S. troops to Somalia, on June 5, 1993, the U.N. would suffer the worst loss of its peacekeepers in decades when the Pakistani contingent was attacked while inspecting an SNA weapons storage site. Mohammed Farah Aidid, head of the SNA, would become a fugitive after UNOSOM II blamed his faction for the incident and a hunt for him would begin that would characterize most of the U.N. intervention up until the Battle of Mogadishu.

Wikipedia: Battle of Mogadishu (1993)

American

Somali