By IRNA
New Delhi : Despite the US and UK claims that they are leading the war on terror globally, the country that has had to face the worst of terrorist attacks on its own soil, barring war-torn Iraq, is India.
In fact, India has since 2004 lost more lives to terrorist incidents than all of North America, South America, Central America, Europe and Eurasia put together.
All of these vast swathes of the globe lost a total of 3,280 lives in terrorist incidents between January 2004 and March this year. India alone lost 3,674 lives over the same period of three years and three months, a leading English daily TOI reported here today
India not only had the highest number of deaths after Iraq, but also the highest number of terror-related incidents and injured among all countries (again, barring Iraq) – more than all the war zones around the globe. India has been hit by terrorists at will and with chilling regularity – Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Malegaon, Varanasi, Jammu and Kashmir, the list is endless.
Indeed, if one had to pick a terrorist hotspot on the globe it would have to be South Asia. Outside of Iraq, 20,781 people were killed in terrorist violence between January 2004 and March 2007, according to data available from the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) of the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC).
Almost half of them, 9,283 to be precise, were killed in South Asia.
Besides India, Afghanistan has seen 2,405 lives being lost while more than 1,000 each have been killed in Pakistan and Nepal. Sri Lanka has had 866 terrorism-related deaths and Bangladesh 158. Bhutan and the Maldives are the only South Asian nations not to have lost lives to terror in this period.