WASHINGTON: The U.S. State Department said on Thursday the number of people killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan last year rose by more than 70 percent, despite an overall drop in such violence worldwide. Data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community suggested that Pakistan faces a growing threat from terrorist violence. The number of people killed in such attacks – including the Sept. 20 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad – rose to 2,293 from 1,340, according to the data released by the State Department. The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan more than doubled to 1,839 from 890, U.S. officials told reporters.These increases occurred even as the death toll from worldwide terrorism fell to 15,765 from 22,508 in 2007 and the number of overall attacks dropped to 11,770 from 14,506, they said.The number of people killed in Iraq fell to 5,016 from 13,606, U.S. officials said, while the number of attacks declined to 3,258 from 6,210.But the number of people killed by terrorism in Afghanistan, where the United States and other nations are fighting a renewed Taliban insurgency, surged to 1,989 in 2008 from 1,961 a year earlier, the department said. Attacks in Afghanistan rose to 1,220 from 1,125.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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