India is in the fifth place after Afghanistan, Syria, Congo and Yemen in terms of the number of terrorist attacks, said the US report

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020, India faced 679 terror attacks, compared to 2019 when it witnessed 655 terror-related incidents, the US Department of State said in a report.

India faced 679 terrorism-related incidents in which 567 people died in 2020 as against 655 terror attacks recorded in 2019 said the report of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), contracted with the US State Department.

Globally, there were 10,172 terror attacks in 98 countries in 2020, which is 1,300 more than in 2019, the START report said.

Afghanistan had 1,722 terror attacks, followed by Syria (1,322) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) (999), it informed.

According to the US State Department report, Jammu and Kashmir, with 257 occurrences (37.8%), Chhattisgarh, with 145 incidents (21.4%), and Jharkhand, with 69 incidents, were the states in India that witnessed the most terror incidents.

It said that the CPI-Maoist remained the fourth-most destructive group in the world in 2020, with 298 occurrences and 202 fatalities among offenders in India.

The Maoists were responsible for 44% (679) of all terror attacks in the country, while the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen were responsible for 6%, the report mentioned.

About 29 percent of terror acts in India were not linked to any one group, it further maintained.

The US data said, that the Taliban (including the Haqqani Network) was responsible for the most terror incidents (1,325) and fatalities (7,417) in 2020, followed by ISIS-Core (which comprises the ISIS elements in Iraq and Syria), al-Shabaab, CPI-Maoists and ISIS-DR Congo.

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