Terrorism Expert Predicts a Record 15,000 Terror Attacks Around the Globe in 2014

(CNSNews.com) – At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Friday focused on the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), William Braniff, executive director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, said he expects the number of terror attacks in 2014 to number a record 15,000 when all the data is collected.

“When START releases the full Global Terrorism Database dataset for 2014, we anticipate it will include over 15,000 terrorist attacks - a vast increase from 2013, which was already the most lethal and active year for global terrorism in the dataset, which dates back to 1970,” Braniff said in his sworn statement.

Braniff said preliminary data for the first nine months of 2014 (January 1 to September 30) show “nearly 13,000 terrorist attacks killed more than 31,000 people.”

In 2013, there were 8,500 terror attacks that killed over 22,000 people, Braniff said.

Braniff also testified that radical Islamists are responsible for the majority of the attacks and deaths, which mostly take place in majority Muslim countries.

“Approximately 50 percent of the terrorist attacks and 47 percent of fatalities in the first nine months of 2014 occurred in just three countries – Iraq (approx. 3,200 attacks/8,950 fatalities), Pakistan (approx. 1,705 attacks, 1,690 fatalities), and Afghanistan (approx. 1,410 attacks/4,300 fatalities).”

Braniff continued: “Based on data from the last several years, it is clear that groups generally associated with al Qaeda remain the most lethal groups in the world, and it is their violence that has driven global increases in activity and lethality.

“According to preliminary data from the first nine months of 2014, seven of the 10 most lethal terrorist groups include ISIL, Boko Haram, the Taliban, alShabaab, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, TehrikiTaliban Pakistan, and Jabhat al-Nusra,” Braniff said.

“Given this reality, it is even more alarming to note that ISIL conducted more attacks than any other terrorist group, including all other groups associated with AQAM in the first nine months of 2014,” Braniff said.