Boko Haram killed more people than ISIS did last year

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published 18 November 2015

Terrorist attacks killed a total of 32,000 people last year, marking an 80 percent uptick in deaths caused by terrorism between 2013 and 2014, a new report by The Global Terrorism Index reveals. While ISIS certainly contributed to that rising death tally, the group isn't even the deadliest terrorist organization currently in existence — Boko Haram is.

In 2014, Nigeria-based Islamist militant group Boko Haram killed a total of 6,644 people, injured 1,742, and incited 453 incidents. ISIS, in comparison, killed 6,073 people, though it injured far more — 5,799 people — and incited well over twice the number of incidents, at 1,071. Combined, the two groups were responsible for 51 percent of all claimed terrorist attacks in 2014, NPR reports.

The country most affected by this dramatic uptick in terrorist activity was Iraq, which saw the largest number ever of people killed in one country by terrorist activity. While Nigeria didn't see as many attacks as Iraq, it had the "largest-ever increase in terrorist attacks," with attacks spiking by 300 percent in just one year, NPR reports. Nigeria and just four other countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria — accounted for a total of 78 percent of deaths caused by terrorist attacks last year.