Uttara Choudhury

New York: There were more than 2,300 people who were killed by terrorists in India last year making it one of the most terror-hit places in the world, the US state department said in its annual terrorism report released on Wednesday.

In comparison, 1,335 people died in neighbouring Pakistan, while in Afghanistan the number of attacks rose 16%, killing 1,966 people. About 43% of terrorist attacks occurred in Iraq, taking the lives of 13,600 people.

In a grim reminder that terrorism stalks the world, the US report estimated over 22,000 people were killed by terrorists around the world in 2007, 8% more than in 2006, although the overall number of attacks fell.

The bloodiest terrorist strikes in India were carried out by Muslim suicide bombers in Jammu and Kashmir, Naxalites and Maoists in eastern and central India and separatists in the north-eastern states.

The US National Counterterrorism Centre which helped compile the report noted that there was a drop in militant activity along the heavily militarised Line of Control and credited Pakistan with clamping down on cross-border terrorism in the summer of 2007. However, the report warns that Pakistani-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), still plans lethal attacks across India.

The report pinned India’s rough battle with terrorism on an “overburdened” legal system and lack of well-trained police officers. “The Indian government’s counter-terrorism efforts remained hampered by outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems.

The Indian court system was slow, laborious, and prone to corruption; terrorism trials can take years to complete,” said the report.

It added that India’s police force was “poorly staffed, lacked training” and was “ill-equipped to combat terrorism effectively.”

In May last year, the Indian government acknowledged that the level of infiltration across the LoC had dropped, but said that militants had in some case “shifted routes” to enter India through its borders with Bangladesh and Nepal.

The report warned that the US and its friends face the “greatest terrorist threat” from a revamped al-Qaeda using a new safe haven in Pakistan to increase attacks.

“Numerous senior al-Qaeda operatives have been captured or killed, but al-Qaeda leaders continued to plot attacks and to cultivate stronger operational connections that radiated outward from Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe,” warned the report blaming a cease-fire the Pakistani government reached with tribal leaders last year for the resurgence.

Source : DNA