Report: Terror attacks up, fatalities down

By Julian Pecquet - 12/04/12 02:57 PM ET

The number of terrorist attacks has steadily increased worldwide over the past decade but the number of fatalities is down 25 percent since peaking in 2007, according to a new report ranking countries according to terrorism impact.

The index from the Institute for Economics and Peace, released Tuesday, found that North America is the region of the world least likely to suffer from terrorism, with a fatality rate 19 times lower than Western Europe's. The regions most at risk in 2011 were the Middle East — particularly Iraq — along with India, Pakistan and Russia.

“Our Global Terrorism Database shows that over the past ten years the worldwide nexus of terrorism has shifted from Western Europe and the Americas to South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa,” said Gary LaFree, the director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, which compiles data on terrorism. “One of the great ironies of our time is that while effective policy against terrorism depends especially on hard data and objective analysis, information on terrorism has been difficult to obtain.”

The index found that since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, fatalities from terrorist attacks have increased by 195 percent, incidents by 460 percent and injuries by 224 percent. Three-quarters of the deaths have occurred in just seven countries, with Iraq topping the list.

The total number of deaths attributable to terrorism was 7,473 in 2011, 25 percent less than in 2007. The decrease coincides largely with the winding down of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.