Under Osama bin Laden's leadership, al Qa'ida has been one of the most lethal terrorist organization in the world, responsible for more than 10,000 deaths and injuries in a dozen years, finds a new analysis by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland (START).
"Al-Qa'ida, the terrorist organization Osama bin Laden founded, was responsible for fomenting more mass casualty attacks than any other group in recent history," says START Director Gary LaFree, a University of Maryland professor responsible for assembling the world's most comprehensive unclassified terrorism database.
Key Findings From START Research
Additionally, START researchers Victor Asal and R. Karl Rethemeyer at the University of Albany (SUNY) count 33 separate terror groups with direct links and alliances to al-Qa'ida.
A complete report is available online at: http://www.start.umd.edu/start/publications/br/BackgroundReport_AQAttacks.pdf
In addition to the above data, the report includes:
Global Terrorism Database
These data were collected and compiled from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), available at: http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ . It contains information on more than 87,000 terrorist incidents around the world since 1970.
GTD is a project of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Based at the University of Maryland, College Park -- an initiative of the school's College of Behavioral and Social Sciences -- START aims to provide timely guidance on how to disrupt terrorist networks, reduce the incidence of terrorism, and enhance the resilience of U.S. society in the face of the terrorist threat.
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