TerrorismTerrorist attack deaths increase in Iraq, the West, despite decrease worldwide

The number of terrorist attacks and resulting deaths worldwide decreased in 2016, but an increase in activity in Iraq and the ongoing violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) curbed the reduction, according to a new report from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD), which is headquartered at the University of Maryland.

In 2016, more than 13,400 terrorist attacks took place around the world, resulting in more than 34,000 total deaths, including more than 11,600 perpetrator deaths. This represents a 9 percent decrease in the total number of terrorist attacks, and a 10 percent decrease in the total number of deaths, in comparison to 2015.

Despite the decreases in worldwide totals, the number of people killed in attacks increased in North America by 38 percent, Western Europe by 39 percent and Central Asia by 54 percent from 2015 to 2016. In fact, with 238 deaths in the region, 2016 was the deadliest year in Western Europe with respect to terrorist attacks since 1988, when Pan American flight 103 crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland after an explosive device detonated on board.

START notes that the increases in deaths in North America and Western Europe were both heavily influenced by mass casualty attacks carried out by ISIL operatives or ISIL-inspired individuals in Orlando (49 victim deaths), Nice (86), Brussels (32), and Berlin (12).

In 2016, ISIL remained the deadliest terrorist organization in the world, with its “core” operatives responsible for 1,400 terrorist attacks that resulted in more than 11,700 total deaths—more than one third of the year’s total deaths—which represents a 39 percent increase in ISIL’s lethality.

ISIL-affiliated perpetrator groups—those organizations that have declared allegiance to ISIL—carried out more than 950 additional attacks that resulted in nearly 3,900 total deaths.

“In mid-2015 and early 2016 terrorist violence carried out by ISIL affiliates was comparable to that of ISIL itself, if not more severe at times,” said Erin Miller, GTD program manager and author of the report. “The collective terrorist activity of ISIL-affiliated perpetrators gradually declined throughout the remainder of 2015 and 2016, but during this same time period we saw an increase in the number of individual assailants who were not members of a group, but claimed that they were motivated by allegiance to ISIL.”