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Iraq, Nigeria record most attacks, fatalities by extremists–report

Tuesday, 22 July 2014 21:27 GMT

Children, who fled from the violence in Mosul, play at a refugee camp in Iraq's Kurdistan region on June 27, 2014. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

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Global fatalities linked to militant extremists were up 30 percent in the last year compared to the previous five-year average.

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Nigeria registered the most fatalities per attack by insurgent or extremist groups and Iraq posted the highest number of attacks by such groups in the last year, according to global risk analytics company Maplecroft.

Maplecroft said global fatalities linked to militant extremists were up 30 percent compared to the previous five-year average. The firm used a new security monitoring service known as Terrorism and Security Dashboard (MTSD) which “logs, analyses and plots all reported incidents of terrorism, piracy, political violence and human rights abuses by security forces.”

Iraq was rated the highest risk country for violence in the analysis with 3,158 attacks that resulted in 5,929 fatalities, an increase of 2,188 deaths from the previous year.

In January, fighters from a Sunni extremist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), took control of parts of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, triggering an ongoing bloody insurgency and plunging the country into chaos and violence.

In June, ISIL militants seized the city of Mosul and other smaller Iraqi towns, forcing 500,000 to flee their homes.

 In Nigeria, where Islamist group Boko Haram is waging a war against the government to establish an Islamic state, Maplecroft registered 146 attacks between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2014. Over 3,400 people were killed in the attacks, an average of 24 fatalities per attack, compared to 2 deaths per attack in Iraq.

(Editing by Lisa Anderson: lisa.b.anderson@thomsonreuters.com)

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