Islamist fighters calling themselves the “Battalion of Blood” launched a surprise attack on a heavily guarded natural gas plant in Eastern Algeria early this morning, capturing 41 hostages, all of them foreign nations, and many from Britain, France, and the US.

 

Officials are couching it as “terrorism” and promising a retaliatory response, but the group involved in the attack is making it no real secret that this operation is, in their eyes, an extension of the French invasion of Mali over the weekend, simply the transition of the already regional war into a fully global crisis.