On October 3, 1993, five weeks before UNAMIR arrived in Kigali, eighteen American Rangers serving alongside the UN force in Somalia were killed, and television images of their bodies being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu were beamed around the world. UNAMIR had a much more limited mandate than the Somalian mission: it was prohibited from using force except in self-defense, and even for that it was poorly equipped.
