Terror Attacks At High Levels in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan: Study

The number of terrorist attacks worldwide has sky-rocketed over the past decade, with a third of all incidents taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new study published on Wednesday.

Violence carried out by a “non-state actor” rose from less than a thousand incidents in 2002 to 4,564 attacks in 2011, according to the Global Terrorism Index, produced by the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace.

The other countries most affected were Pakistan, India, Thailand, the Philippines and Russia, the study said.

The number of victims claimed by the violence peaked in 2007 with 10,000 people killed, while 7,500 died in 2011.

“The current global trend of terrorism can best be described as plateauing rather than decreasing” since 2002, the report said.

In 2011, Iraq remained the country with the highest number of deaths from terrorist attacks, with 1,798 killed in 1,228 incidents, half of which took place in Baghdad. US troops...