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Sunni Muslim terrorists responsible for 70 percent of all terrorist murders

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
August 5th, 2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

According to a report by the National Counterterrorism Center, Sunni Muslim terrorists committed "about 70 percent" of the 12,533 terrorist murders in the world last year. The 2011 Report on Terrorism was based upon on information available as of March 12, 2012. Of those most likely to be killed by terrorists, unarmed civilians risked the greatest danger, followed by police officers.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "Sunni extremists accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third consecutive year," the report says. "More than 5,700 incidents were attributed to Sunni extremists, accounting for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of all fatalities."

Breaking down global terrorist attacks, of the 12,533 terrorism-related deaths worldwide, 8,886 were perpetrated by "Sunni extremists," 1,926 by "secular/political/anarchist" groups, 1,519 by "unknown" factions, 170 by a category described as "other", and 77 by "Neo-Nazi/Fascist/White Supremacist" groups.

When asked if other terrorist actions could be ascribed to other religious groups, Carl Kropf, a spokesman at NCTC said "We don't break it down any further than that.

"I thought it was a pretty good treatment of how it is not just Sunni extremists, but there are other elements that conduct attacks, and those are captured as best we can."

The good news is that the report showed that the number of terrorism-related fatalities "decreased by five percent" from 13,193 in 2010 to 12,533 in 2011, while the number of attacks dropped 12 percent from 11,641 in 2010 to 10,283 last year.

"More than half [6,418] of the people killed in 2011 were civilians and 755 were children," the report noted. Coming second after civilians were police. Terrorism was responsible for the deaths of 2,423 law enforcement officers, followed by military security forces (1,389), and government representatives (768).

"Muslims continued to bear the brunt of terrorism, while attacks targeting Christians dropped nearly 45 percent from a five-year high in 2010," the report stated.

"In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years," added the report.

Countries with Muslim majorities such as Afghanistan "suffered the largest number of fatalities overall (in 2011) with 3,245 deaths, followed by Iraqis (2,958), Pakistanis (2,038), Somalis (1,013), and Nigerians (590)."

Al-Qaeda which is considered to be Sunni extremists, were "responsible for at least 688 attacks that resulted in almost 2,000 deaths," the report showed.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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