In February 1976 legionnaires of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2e REP) and the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion (13e DBLE) were involved in the rescue of 31 children in Loayada, a village on the border between today’s Djibouti and Somalia. The children were kidnapped in Djibouti, capital of the then French Territory of Afars and Issas (TFAI, formerly French Somaliland, today’s Djibouti), by four rebels from the Somali Coast Liberation Front (Front de Libération de la Côte des Somalis, FLCS), a pan-Somali guerrilla organization created in the 1960s and supported by the Somali government.

See information about the 1976 Loyada Hostage Rescue Mission.