ICC Note:

The U.S. State Department’s 2013 Annual Report on Global Terrorism, submitted this afternoon to the Congress, highlighted a 43% increase in terrorist activity globally, with  major nods to growing levels of terrorism throughout the Africa, including in Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, and Sudan. Documenting attacks by Nigeria’s Boko Haram and Somalia’s al-Shabaab, the report places these relatively local Islamic insurgencies into a greater global terror context. That said, both groups’ targeting of Christian populations, as evidenced by continuous lethal attacks on churches and Christian communities by Boko Haram and the assassination of two Somali lawmakers for allowing the “Christian invasion of Somalia” and the recent public execution of an innocent Christian woman by al-Shabaab militants, cannot and should not be ignored.

4/30/2014 Africa (Fox News) – A surge in the number of aggressive Al Qaeda affiliates and like-minded groups the Middle East and North Africa poses a serious threat to U.S. interests and allies, the State Department said Wednesday in reporting a more than 40 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide between 2012 and 2013.

The department also singled out Iran as a major state sponsor of terrorism that continues to defy demands it prove its atomic ambitions are peaceful even as Washington pursues negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program.

In its annual global terrorism report, the department said that losses in Al Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan “accelerated” the network’s decentralization in 2013. That has resulted in more autonomous and more aggressive affiliates, notably in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, northwest Africa, and Somalia, it said.

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