Terror strikes rose by 81% in 2014: Report

There were 13,463 attacks in 95 countries in 2014 — up by a third from 9,700 the year before.

WASHINGTON: Militants fuelled a major spike in terror attacks last year, with the global death toll soaring 81% in more than 1,100 assaults a month, the United States said on Friday.

There were 13,463 attacks in 95 countries in 2014 — up by a third from 9,700 the year before — with Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan bearing the brunt of extremist violence, the State Department said in a report.

Most of the attacks were carried out by the self-styled Islamic State (IS) militants, who unleashed 1,083 assaults last year as part of a deadly march across Iraq and Syria. The Taliban were the next most lethal group, with 894 attacks.

There was also a sharp rise in violence in Nigeria, where Boko Haram’s Islamist militants have been spreading terror in the north. There, some 7,512 people were killed in 662 attacks.

The report also highlighted a rise in “lone offender violent extremists in the West” such as the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January in Paris.

“The terrorism challenges that we face continue to evolve at a rapid pace and we cannot predict with precision what the landscape will look like one decade or even really a year from now,” acknowledged top US counterterrorism envoy Tina Kaidanow, unveiling the 2014 Country Reports on Terrorism.

“We must do more to address the cycle of violent extremism and transform the very environment from which these terrorist movements emerge,” she said.

And she denounced the “savagery” seen in some of last year’s attacks, which had led to the high death toll.

Kidnappings also rose by a third, with more than 9,400 people taken hostage, three times as many as in 2013. Ransoms have been used by both IS and Al Qaeda as an effective way to raise money.

But Kaidanow said that the numbers did not tell the whole story, saying the US has been effective over the past year in building up a coalition to help fight militant groups, choke off funding and stem the flow of foreign fighters.