0.7 per cent terror victims in Western Europe

Western Europe accounted for less than one per cent of the 34,676 people killed in terror attacks in 2016 and only two per cent of attacks, a new report has revealed.

The Middle East and North Africa were affected the most by last year’s extremist violence, according to figures from the Global Terrorism Database maintained by the University of Maryland. Terror attacks killed 19,121 people in North Africa and the Middle East - 55 per cent of the total.

The report offers a different perspective after carnage in France, Britain and Spain.

Iraq alone suffered nine of the 11 deadliest attacks in 2016, each carried out by the Islamic State group.

The deadliest attack was also in Iraq, where a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden truck outside a Baghdad shopping centre, killing at least 382 people.

So-called Islamic State was the deadliest group in 2016, its ‘core’ operatives carrying out over 1,400 atrocities that killed 11,700 people, including the attackers.

In South Asia, Pakistan was the worst affected, with more than 1,100 people killed, while in sub-Saharan Africa the attacks were concentrated mainly in Nigeria and Somalia.

While Western Europe accounted for only a small proportion of the total bloodshed, the study mentioned the spike in the use of vehicles as killing machines in attacks on the continent.