SOME 11,000 terrorist attacks were carried out in the world last year, killing more than 14,600 people, the majority of them in Iraq, the US government reported overnight.
The figures contained in an annual State Department report were sharply higher than the 651 attacks and 1,907 deaths registered in 2004 but were due to the use of a new broader definition of terrorism, the document said.
It said Iraq, plagued by an insurgency and rising sectarian violence, accounted for just over 30 per cent (3,500) of the 11,111 terrorist attacks worldwide and 55 per cent (8,300) of the more than 14,602 deaths.
The department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2005 also said the number of suicide attacks rose in several countries, totalling 360 and causing more than a fifth (3,000) of all fatalities across the globe.
Nearly 25,000 people were wounded by terrorists in 2005, the report said. Of the total 39,000 killed and wounded, 10,000 to 15,000 were Muslims, most of them in Iraq. Globally, 1,000 children were among the dead.
In a strategic assessment, the department echoed what analysts have been saying for months, that Al-Qaeda as a worldwide network was getting weaker but the threat remained from small, loosely affiliated groups.
"This trend means there could be a larger number of smaller attacks, less meticulously planned, and local rather than transnational in scope," the report said.
It also called for stepped-up global and regional cooperation to combat the increasing use by terrorists of the Internet and satellite communications for recruitment, training, intelligence and resource sharing.
Henry Crumpton, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, said he saw "significant progress" in the fight against Al-Qaeda but was less categorical when asked whether the world had become safer.
"I think so," he told. "But I think that you look at the ups and downs of this battle, it's going to take us a long time to win this. You can't measure this month by month or year by year. It's going to take a lot longer."
The department retained its list of a half-dozen state sponsors of terrorism that comprised Iran, identified as the "most active" offender, along with Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
The terrorism figures have been a political hot potato since 2004, when the White House used them to trumpet success in the war on terror, only to have the State Department retract the 2003 data as vastly understated.
This year, the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC), which compiles the figures, abandoned the criteria of "international terrorism" that included only incidents involving the territory or citizens of two or more countries.
It used a broader definition of "terrorism" that included incidents identified as "pre-meditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents."
Iraq thus emerged as a major theatre of terrorist violence three years after the US-led invasion to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.
As one indication, the NCTC broke down the number of incidents with 10 or more fatalities. In Iraq, the number went from 65 attacks killing 1,700 people in 2004 to 150 incidents leaving 3,400 dead last year.
For the rest of the world, the number of such incidents stayed steady at 70 while the deaths dropped from 3,000 to 1,500 in the absence of such major assaults as the Madrid bombings or the siege at a Russian school.
In a small but potentially significant shift in language, the State Department referred to Iraq as "a key front" in the global war on terrorism, and not "the central front" previously referred to by the US administration.
The report said "Iraq is not currently a terrorist safe haven" as has been feared by the American administration but Sunni insurgents and Shiite groups have been trying to make it one.
