Attack on Hotel in Mali

Yes, awful, lots of hostages I think.

Another reason to remember this is a worldwide problem and only a worldwide fight against extremism has a hope in hells chance of stopping it.

Poor souls.

news.sky.com/story/1591106/at-least-27-bodies-at-mali-hostage-hotel

Very sad that more have been killed. Al Quaeda this time. Two main nasty factions now at work.

Saw a film about Mali last week called They'll Have to Kill us First. It was about the events of 2013 and the jihadi attempts to ban Malian music ( telling Malians not to sing or play music is like telling Brits not to drink tea). At the end a mixture of resistance and the French military put an end to the ban, more or less, but Mali has not truly been at peace since then. An older Tuareg woman, a singer, said 'the French came with their planes, boom boom boom and now we can have music again, but they didn't touch the roots. The roots are still there growing under the ground..'
And so it has proved.

She is right about the roots claire - that is the crux of the problem in all these atrocities. We must put our faith in our intelligence services and hope they are able to dig deep enough.