Bin Laden claims to have carried out attacks on U.S. soldiers who landed in Somalia in 1992 to help stop civil strife.
U.S. troops eventually withdrew in 1995, but not before several U.S. soldiers were killed in a planned 1993 ambush by Somali rebel gangs.
Bin Laden has said that he was involved in the shooting down of a U.S. military helicopters in Mogadishu. Eighteen U.S. servicemen were killed in that incident.