page_title: Military history of Somalia
section_title: Lufthansa Flight 181
hierarchical_section_title: Military history of Somalia / Modern / Lufthansa Flight 181
caption_attribution_description: English: Military portrait of Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, Somalia's longest-serving President. Deutsch: Mohamed Siad Barre, (* 1910 oder 1919 † 1995), somalischer Offizier, der 1969 durch einen Militärputsch Präsident Somalias wurde.
context_page_description: The military history of Somalia encompasses the major conventional wars, conflicts and skirmishes involving the historic empires, kingdoms and sultanates in the territory of present-day Somalia, through to modern times. It also covers the martial traditions, military architecture and hardware employed by Somali armies and their opponents.
  Ancient sources refer to a major military alliance between the Kingdom of Kush and one of its allies, the Kingdom of Punt, against the armies of Ancient Egypt. In the early Middle Ages, the Ajuran Empire expanded its territories and established its hegemonic rule through a skillful combination of warfare, trade linkages and alliances, and defeated many times against the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. The Kingdom of Ifat successfully conquered the Kingdom of Shewa in the same time-period. A hundred years later a major conventional war would commence during the Conquest of Abyssinia pitching the Kingdom of Adal allied by the Ottoman Empire against the Solomonic Dynasty supported by the Portuguese Empire. The conflict is the earliest example of cannon and matchlock warfare on the continent.
context_section_description: Lufthansa Flight 181 was a Lufthansa Boeing 737-230 Adv aircraft named Landshut that was hijacked on October 13, 1977, by four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (who called themselves Commando Martyr Halime). On October 18, in coordination with the Barre administration and supported by the Somali military, the West German counter-terrorism group GSG 9 in Mogadishu, Somalia stormed the aircraft. All 86 passengers were rescued. The rescue operation was codenamed Feuerzauber, the German term for "Fire Magic". The hijacking was carried out in support of the Red Army Faction and is regarded as part of the German Autumn.
caption: Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, leader of the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC).
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