Terrorist acts have tripled

2005-04-28 11:57

P Parameswaran

Washington - The United States said on Wednesday that terrorist activity in the world increased sharply last year with the number of attacks and dead more than tripling but that it was winning the global "war on terror."

The US National Counterterrorism Centre, an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, said in a report there were 651 terrorist attacks across the globe last year with 1 907 people killed.

This compares with 208 attacks involving 625 fatalities in 2003, according to State Department figures released last year.

A total of 6 704 people were wounded in terrorist strikes last year, according to the centre, compared to the 3 646 reported for 2003. Another 710 people were taken hostage in 2004, the new report said.

But State Department Counsellor Philip Zelikow said: "I think we are winning the war on terror but it is a very long struggle.

Political hot potato

The centre released the figures for the first time and separately from an annual State Department country report on terrorism which said the global threat remained "significant" and Iraq was still the central battleground.

Earlier this month, the department said it had decided not to publish statistics after widely publicised errors were found in figures for 2003 that had to be revised.

In Iraq, the number of terrorist incidents ballooned from 22 in 2003 to 201 last year.

The terrorist data has become a political hot potato, with Democrats suggesting that the administration of President George W Bush was politicising the issue.

Congressional Democrats, led by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, charged that last year's erroneous report was used to bolster administration claims to be making progress in the war on terror.

More than half the attacks reported for 2004 were in South Asia, which recorded 327 incidents that produced 502 deaths. The bulk of the incidents were reported in the divided Kashmir state claimed by both India and Pakistan.

Most of those killed were in the Middle East, where 726 people died in 270 attacks. But the bloodiest strikes were in Europe and Eurasia, where 636 people were killed overall in 24 incidents, including a train bombing in Spain and school seizure in Russia.

Nearly half the incidents (46%) involved armed attacks, the report said, while suicide and other bombings accounted for 29 percent. Sixteen percent of the attacks involved kidnappings.

The annual Country Reports on Terrorism 2004 also identified Cuba, North Korea, Syria and above all Iran as continued supporters of terrorism.

The 129-page document said that "international terrorism continued to pose a significant threat to the United States and its partners in 2004."

The report said Iraq, which the United States invaded in March 2003 to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, "remains the central battleground in the global war on terrorism." - AFP

- SAPA