WITH only the Talibans in Afghanistan ahead, Boko Haram is now the second widely known perpetrator of terrorism in the world, according to a report by the United States (U.S.) government.
Just last week, the U.S. State Department announced a $7 million bounty for information that will lead to the capture of the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau.
An annex to the U.S. government report on terrorism last year, just made available to us, shows that besides the Taliban in Afghanistan, Boko Haram in Nigeria had the highest number of terror attacks last year and killed also the second highest number of people.
The statistical report called ‘START’ conducted by the University of Maryland for the American government on global terrorism in 2012 has revealed that while the Talibans killed 1,842 people in 525 attacks last year, and came tops on the infamous ranking, Boko Haram came second killing 1,132 in 364 attacks.Both the Talibans and Boko Haram killed more than Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Maoists in India, Al-Shabaab, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula among other global terrorist groups.
The statistical report also revealed that of the top 10 countries with the most terrorist attacks last year, Nigeria came fifth because of the activities of Boko Haram.Besides, Nigeria ranked fourth in number of deaths from terrorist attacks. According to the statistical information attached to the recent “U.S. Terrorism 2012 reports”, last year alone, there were a total number of 546 terror attacks in Nigeria with 1,386 killed.
“The average lethality of terrorist attacks in Nigeria (2.54 deaths per attack) is more than 50 per cent higher than the global average of 1.64.”The statistical report revealed that in 2012, the majority of highly lethal attacks -159 in all -, took place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria and Syria, killing a total of 2,880 people.
The report stated that Boko Haram “was responsible for a number of highly lethal attacks in 2012, including a series of co-ordinated bombings and armed assaults in Kano, Nigeria, on January 20 that killed an estimated 190 people.”The ‘START’ was conducted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, based at the University of Maryland.
The consortium is deemed a U.S. Homeland Security Centre of Excellence for Science and Technology.The U.S. laws require the government in its yearly terrorism reports to include complete statistical information on number of individuals killed, injured or kidnapped by each terrorist group during the preceding year.
Posted by Peter Omagbemi
Posted with Blogsy
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