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WASHINGTON - The number of people killed in "terrorism" around the world surged by 40 per cent to more than 20,000 last year largely because of violence in Iraq, a US report said on today.
Global terrorism fatalities rose to 20,498 in 2006 from 14,618 in 2005 with
the bulk of last year's deaths -- about 13,000 -- in Iraq, where US-led forces are confronting "terrorist" groups like al Qaeda, an insurgency as well as sectarian violence four years after the US-led invasion.
In the latest incident, a suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 32 people when he blew himself up among mourners at a Shi'ite funeral in the town of Khalis in volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad, Iraqi police said.
Since US and Iraqi forces launched a security crackdown in Baghdad in February, militants including Sunni Islamist al Qaeda have increasingly staged attacks outside the capital.
According to an annex of the State Department's annual "Country Reports on Terrorism" publication, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, the number of "terrorist" incidents last year rose to 14,338 last year from 11,153 in 2005.
Of these, attacks in Iraq nearly doubled to 6630 from 3468 in 2005 and represented about 45 per cent of the total.
The report described Iraq as at the centre of the US "war on terror", with coalition forces battling al Qaeda in Iraq and insurgents as well as "militias and death squads increasingly engaged in sectarian violence and criminal organisations taking advantage of Iraq's deteriorating security situation".
The number of attacks also jumped to 749 from 491 in Afghanistan, where US, Nato and other forces are fighting a revived Taleban insurgency more than five years after US-led forces toppled the Taleban regime that harbored al Qaeda.
The numbers, which are based on "open sources" or public information, were compiled by the National Counterterrorism Centre and included in a State Department report that provides detailed assessments of such violence around the world.
The report cited some progress in global efforts to combat terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, including enhanced border security, a crackdown on "terrorist" financing and the dismantling of some violent groups.
But it said because of this, al Qaeda has adapted, moving toward local violence rather than "expeditionary" attacks like Sept. 11, where it inserted militants from abroad to hijack and crash commercial aircraft in the United States.
"We have seen a trend toward guerrilla terrorism, where the organisation seeks to grow the team close to its target, using target country nationals," it said. "Through intermediaries, Web-based propaganda and subversion of immigrant expatriate populations, terrorists inspire local cells to carry out attacks which they then exploit for propaganda purposes."
"A deeper trend is the shift in the nature of terrorism, from traditional international terrorism of the late 20th century into a new form of transnational non-state warfare that resembles a form of global insurgency," it added.
The report listed the five countries that the United States describes as state sponsors of terrorism -- Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. It accused Iran and Syria of fomenting the violence in Iraq.
"Iran remains the most significant state sponsor of terrorism and continues to threaten its neighbours and destabilise Iraq by providing weapons, training, advice and funding to select Iraqi Shia militants," it said. "Syria ... supports some Iraqi Baathists and militants and has continued to allow foreign fighters and terrorists to transit through its borders into Iraq."
- REUTERS
