Frontline

Ambush in Mogadishu (1998x15)

Air date: Sep 29, 1998

With U.S. special forces now participating in a ground war in Afghanistan, FRONTLINE updates this 1998 investigation of a United Nations peacekeeping mission gone awry. On October 3, 1993, elite units of U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force were pinned down on the streets of Mogadishu by forces of the Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid. Seventeen hours later, eighteen American soldiers were dead and seventy-five lay wounded. The Rangers and Delta Force are now fighting in Afghanistan. FRONTLINE investigates new charges that Osama bin Laden trained and supported the Somali fighters responsible for the attack and explores the lessons learned by the U.S. military.