Anniversary of GIs’ Deaths Celebrated

Thousands of Somalis danced in the streets of the capital on the third anniversary of the massacre of 18 U.S. troops. Photographs of the bloody body of one American victim being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu shocked Americans and triggered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the African nation. Hussein Aidid, Somalia’s self-appointed president, told a cheering crowd at a bombed-out soccer stadium that the occasion was a “victorious national day for the Somalis.” Aidid, a former U.S. Marine who succeeded his father, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, after his death in August, did not mention the United States. But he demanded that “wrongdoers” compensate his people for 14,000 killed and 45,000 wounded in what he called an “unholy massacre against Somalia.”