Dhaka – Four percent of the global terrorist attacks in 2015 took place in Bangladesh, while nearly half of all terrorist attacks occurred in four countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, said a global report.
The Global Terrorism Index-2016, published on Wednesday, has placed Bangladesh at 22nd position among 130 nations.
In 2015, 23 countries registered their highest number of deaths from terrorism on record, according to the index report produced by the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).The year 2015 was also a difficult period for Bangladesh, resulting in the most attacks and deaths since at least 2000, although the lethality rate per attack was low. There were 459 attacks which resulted in 75 deaths, said the report.
Historically, terrorism in Bangladesh has been carried out by local groups such as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, a group which was allegedly involved in the July 2016 Holey Artisan Bakery attack in Dhaka that resulted in 29 deaths, it claimed.
However, for the first time al-Qa’ida in the Indian Subcontinent and a local ISIL affiliate engaged in attacks, resulting in 11 deaths in 2015, the report claimed.
This is the fourth edition of the Global Terrorism Index which provides a comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism over the last 16 years, covering the period from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2015.
Produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the GTI is based on data from the Global Terrorism Database which is collected and collated by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Dpartment of Homeland Security Centre of Excellence led by the University of Maryland.
The Global Terrorism Database is considered to be the most comprehensive dataset on terrorist activity globally and has now codified over 150,000 terrorist incidents. – UNB
