The expression Black Hawk Down, the title of a Hollywood film, has become shorthand for a 1993 US military disaster in Somalia.
Eighteen American soldiers lost their lives in the fighting that began on 3 October, but so did hundreds of Somalis.
As Netflix launches a documentary about those events, the BBC has spoken to some Somalis still scarred by what happened.
Despite being surrounded by the debris of an ongoing civil war, Mogadishu’s residents in the early 1990s embraced the moments of serenity.
The warm Sunday sunshine and cooling ocean breeze made for the perfect opportunity for Binti Ali Wardhere, 24 at the time, to visit relatives with her mother.’
“That day was calm,” she remembers.
But like everyone else in the city she was unaware that the Americans were getting ready to attack warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed – and what happened would change her life forever.
The US had deployed soldiers to Somalia in 1992. They were there to support a UN mission that offered humanitarian assistance to alleviate a famine – in part caused by the collapse of the central government.
But after Aideed was blamed for being behind the killing of 24 UN peacekeepers in June 1993, he became a focus of military action.
This included a US raid in July in which at least 70 Somalis died, marking a turning-point in the way the Americans were viewed. It also led to the deployment of elite US Rangers.
On 3 October, the US got intelligence that Aideed would be at a meeting with his top officials at a hotel. The Americans launched an airborne operation that was supposed to take 90 minutes – in the end it lasted 17 hours.
