Just moments ago, unidentified gunmen stormed a mall in a mainly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, killing 10 and taking some 75 hostages.
Although no one immediately took credit for the assault, the most likely culprit is of course ISIS, which is struggling to hold onto key territory in the country in the face of a resurgent Iraqi military and persistent attacks from Iran's Shiite militias.
While today's Baghdad attack is brazen - it marks an incursion into the Iraqi capital - it's sadly par for the proverbial course in the region where at least four wars are currently playing out.
Of course attacks are not par for the course in the West which is why when a Friday night in Paris turns into the Wild West, it's the biggest story on the planet. And while we doubt the Western public will ever become as desensitized to attacks on "civilized" countries as it is to attacks in the Mid-East, lone wolf incidents are happening more frequently.
Just last week for instance, a man later identified as a refugee who spent time in a German center for asylum seekers ran into a police station in northern Paris screaming "Allahu Akbar" and waving a meat cleaver.
Well don't look now, but yet another knife-wielding "terrorist" was on the loose in France earlier today. An individual who police would later say "does not seem to be in full control of his faculties" attacked worshippers at the Marseille synagogue with a machette.
"Binyamin Amsalem, a teacher, sustained light injuries to his hand when a man wielding a machete attacked him when he was on his way to the synagogue for morning prayers," The Times of Israel reports [4]. The attacker - a 16 year old - threw the knife and ran. He was caught 10 minutes later.
The boy allegedly yelled "Allahu Akbar" prior to the attack.
As for Amsalem, he used a copy [5] of the Torah to defend himself.
