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Iraq sustained most of 2016’s deadliest terrorist attacks: study

 Iraq sustained most of 2016’s deadliest terrorist attacks: study

Iraqi police at the site of a car blast. Archival photo.

Iraqi police at the site of a car blast. Archival photo.

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi had the lion’s share of the deadliest terrorist bombings in 2016, according to a study by the University of Maryland.

Alone, Iraq witnessed nine of the 11 deadliest attacks in 2016, all claimed by Islamic State militants, said a study by the university’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).

“More than half (55%) of all terrorist attacks in the Middle East & North Africa in 2016 took place in Iraq, which saw a 22 percent increase in terrorist attacks since 2015. Likewise, total deaths due to terrorist attacks in Iraq increased 38 percent from 2015 to 2016, comprising nearly two thirds (64%) of all deaths from terrorist attacks in the Middle East & North Africa in 2016,” the study said.

It added that despite a decline in terrorist attacks worldwide between 2015 and 2016, the Middle East region saw a 2% increase in attacks, coupled with a surge in deaths resulting from those attacks by 8 percent.

“Ten of the 11 deadliest terrorist attacks in 2016 took place in the Middle East & North Africa, including nine in Iraq and one in Syria,” the study added. It said Iraq’s deadliest attack was the one which took place in July 2016 in which a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at a shopping center in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad, killing at least 382 people and wounding 200 others.

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