Global terror attacks down in 2016: US
The US State Department said Wednesday that global terror incidents and deaths fell last year, while it maintained its designation of Iran as the top "state sponsor of terrorism."
In its annual country-by-country assessment of terrorism worldwide, the department pinpointed Islamic jihadist groups Islamic State Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as the leading culprits for terror attacks.
But it said overall attacks had fallen nine percent last year from 2015, and deaths were down 13 percent.
More than half of the attacks took place in Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and the Philippines, said the department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, Justin Siberell.
Attacks and deaths were up notably in Iraq, Somalia and Turkey.
The report said a common thread for many of the terror attacks last year "was adherence to violent extremist ideology put forth by a fundamentalist strain of Sunni Islam that perceives itself to be under attack by the West and in conflict with other branches of Islam."
At the same time, predominantly Shia Iran was again officially dubbed the leading state sponsor of terrorism. The report cited its longstanding support for the powerful Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, a US-designated terror organization.
The report cited Hezbollah's support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with troops and supplies as well as its attacks on Israeli soldiers along the Lebanon-Israel border.
In addition, the report said Iran "remained unwilling" to put on trial senior Qaeda members whom it has detained.
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