ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the latest available data on terrorist activity from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), with a special focus on exploring trends and patterns in recent attacks committed by 20 deadliest terrorist organizations and evaluating differences between Islamic extremists and non-Islamic organizations. The GTD is maintained by National Consortium for Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. 47 percent of all attacks during the 1970s in the GTD were located in Western Europe. The Taliban tops the rankings, followed closely by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. Bombings are attacks that use explosive devices, including bombs detonated manually or by remote timer and suicide bombings. Armed assaults are in-person attacks whose primary objective is to cause physical harm or death directly on human targets, by means other than explosives. Kidnappings involve hostage taking of persons or groups of persons with an intention to move and hold the hostages in a clandestine location.
