Report: Rise in new terror groups globally, fewer coordinated attacks

Washington, July 8 (ANI): The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), based at the University of Maryland has come up with a report that says that the 7/7 transit attacks in London five years ago reflects the rise in the number of new terror groups and a continued drop in the number of coordinated attacks, which are usually far more lethal.

According to the report, which is based on START's unclassified Global Terrorism Database, since 2000, there has been increase of an average 41 new terror organizations per year. The number of new organizations has increased each year since 2004.

"This emergence of new groups, with no past history of terrorist attacks, is a discernible global trend in this decade, this trend is similar to peaks evident in the late-1980s - an era of high levels of terrorist activity," the website physorg.com stated the START report, as saying.

The report also said that coordinated attacks, such as those in London five years ago, have always represented a small portion of all terrorism because of the sophistication involved in the process, and the rate has been declining from the previous decade.

The START report is based on analysis of its Global Terrorism Database (GTD) - the world's most comprehensive unclassified database. It includes details on more than 87,000 terror incidents from 1970 to 2008.

In 1970s and early 1980s, coordinated attacks were relatively rare, up to 10 percent of all attacks, but this figure doubled a few years later, peaking at 30 percent in 1998. There has been a steady decline ever since.

"Still the coordinated terror attacks in the 21st century have been both lethal and notable, including the 9/11 attacks, Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, Madrid 2004, 7/71 London attacks in 2005 and the armed assaults in Mumbai in 2008. On average, coordinated attacks are 44 percent more lethal than uncoordinated ones," the report states.

There has been a modest drop in suicide attacks globally in 2008,191 such attacks, according to the latest data available, but it rose in recent years. The 7/7 attacks were the only successful suicide attack in UK.

"Emergent organizations today do not reflect one ideology, but rather, there are new groups representing a wide array of ideological beliefs and particular goals, complicating counterterrorism and anti-terrorism efforts in countries around the world," the START report said. (ANI)