Black Hawk survivor 'would return to help Somalis'

The sole survivor of one of the US Army Black Hawk helicopters shot down by Somali militiamen in Mogadishu in 1993 says the deaths of 18 of his comrades should not have prompted the end of the military mission to restore order.  

Pilot Michael Durant told Radio 4's Broadcasting House that today's famine can be traced back to that decision to withdraw.  

It was 3 October 1993, and Mr Durant's Black Hawk was taking part in an operation to capture close associates of the local warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid.

Since the fall of Somalia's government in 1991, Mr Aidid had been waging a bloody clan war and hampering United Nations efforts to deliver relief supplies to a civilian population facing starvation....