Together with Iraq, the four South Asian countries account for over half of all terror attacks highlighting their disproportionately suffering from this global threat.
The silver lining is the 10 per cent decline in deaths from terrorism in 2015 compared to the year before. Overall, 29,376 people died due to terrorism in 2015, down 3,389 on the previous year. It is the first time that terrorism-related deaths have come down since 2010. For India, 2015 witnessed the highest number of terror attacks since 2000. Most of the attacks had relatively low casualty rates.
“Improvements continued to be recorded in India, which historically has had high levels of terrorist activity. In 2015, India had the highest number of attacks since 2000, whilst paradoxically it had the second lowest number of deaths for a single year since 2000,” the report said.
Of the 49 groups that carried out attacks, 31 of them did not kill anyone. The most dangerous organisations were Maoist Communist groups which claimed 176 of the deaths.
“Two-thirds of attacks in India had no fatalities, compared to 44 per cent globally…The country had 797 attacks and 289 deaths compared to 764 attacks with 418 deaths the previous year,” the report stated.
The GTI report says that the Islamic State (Daesh) has overtaken Boko Haram as the world’s deadliest terrorist group after it claimed responsibility for 6,141 deaths in 2015. The froup pledged its allegiance to IS earlier this year. And the number of countries in which ISIS has carried out attacks more than doubled, from 13 in 2014 to 28 in 2015, including many developed countries like France and Belgium.
The GTI report says terrorism cost an estimated $89.6 billion in 2015, down 15 per cent on the previous year.
