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US State Department: Global terror incidents and deaths fell last year

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WASHINGTON: The US State Department said 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 on Wednesday, the department pinpointed Islamic jihadist groups Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Al-Qaeda and the Taleban as the leading culprits for terror attacks.

But it said overall attacks had fallen 9 per cent last year from 2015, and deaths were down 13 per cent.

More than half of the attacks took place in Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and the Philippines, said the department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, Mr 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".

Predominantly Shiite Iran was again officially dubbed the leading state sponsor of terrorism. The report cited its long-standing support for the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, a US-designated terror organisation.

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 Al-Qaeda members whom it has detained.

"Since at least 2009, Iran has allowed Al-Qaeda facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through the country, enabling Al-Qaeda to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria," it said.

Mr Siberell gave no reason for the decline in attacks, but noted the rising pressure last year from coalition forces on the ISIS group in its Syria and Iraq strongholds.

But as ISIS loses territory, he said, its fighters and sympathisers are dispersing. The threat of attacks elsewhere - in new ISIS locations, and in the ISIS fighters' home countries - is on the rise.

"Another feature of the terrorism landscape in 2016... was the exploitation by terrorist groups of ungoverned territory and conflict zones to establish safe havens from which to expand their reach," said Mr Siberell.

After its expansion to the Libyan coastal city of Sirte last year, Somalia, Yemen, north-eastern Nigeria, portions of the Sinai Peninsula, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions and portions of the Philippines have become "safe-haven environments" for ISIS fighters, the report said. - AFP

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