0.7 percent of terror victims in Western Europe – report

Western Europe accounted for less than one percent of the 34,676 people killed in “terror” attacks in 2016, and only two percent of attacks, according to a new report.

The Middle East and North Africa bore the brunt of last year’s violence, according to figures from the Global Terrorism Database maintained by the University of Maryland.


Wednesday’s report said Western Europe suffered 269 out of a total of 13,488 attacks and 0.7 percent of victims – 238 out of 34,676.

In contrast, attacks killed 19,121 people in north Africa and the Middle East – 55 percent of the total.

Iraq alone suffered nine of the 11 deadliest attacks in 2016, each claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, the report said.

Iraq suffered the worst attack of the year, when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden truck outside a Baghdad shopping centre in Karada, killing at least 382 people.

ISIL was the deadliest group in 2016.

Its “core” operatives carried out more than 1,400 atrocities that killed 11,700 people, including the attackers.

In South Asia, Pakistan was the worst-affected country, with more than 1,100 people killed, while in sub-Saharan Africa the attacks were concentrated mainly in Nigeria and Somalia.

While Western Europe accounted for only a small proportion of the total bloodshed, the study noted the spike in the use of vehicles as weapons in crowd-ramming attacks on the continent.

Recent attacks in Spain used cars.

“Although this tactic is not unprecedented, there has been a marked increase in the frequency and lethality of these attacks,” the report said.