Even a Turkish man (BBC report) was spotted cycling in one of the Mogadishu streets as recently as this week, a thing that was unthinkable only a few months ago.

A roadside bombing killed 21 women who were cleaning rubbish from a southern Mogadishu street on Sunday morning, a hospital official said.

President Clinton has pledged to find out who was responsible for the blast that killed the soldiers as their Humvee traveled down a Mogadishu street, and then "take appropriate action," through the U.N., to protect American troops.

By Christmas week, when American buff-colored military trucks had replaced the gaily decorated Somali jeeps as the most ubiquitous vehicle on the Mogadishu streets, they were being called "American technicals."

On Dec. 14, a Belgian Red Cross worker died after being shot in the stomach on a Mogadishu street while trying to organize the distribution of food.

Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid again showed he would stop at nothing when he sent women and children amid his henchmen into Mogadishu streets to attack members of the United Nations force last week.

Last week, Shabaab militants displayed the bodies of over twenty Burundian peacekeepers, some with their heads cut off, on a dusty Mogadishu street.

In the latest phase, General Aidid's militia has focused on United States troops, killing four G.I.'s on Aug. 8 with a remote-controlled mine on a Mogadishu street.