In the month of November, Nigeria came second to Iraq on the amount of deaths by Jihadists, according to a recent survey by the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The survey report was conducted by the BBC World Service and International Centre for the study of Radicalization (ICSR), a non-profit non-governmental think-tank based, at King’s College, London.
The ICSR investigation recorded a total of 664 attacks in 14 countries and that the four worst-affected countries were Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Syria, accounting for 80% of all deaths.
It reports that Boko Haram carried out the second highest number of terror attacks in the month of November in the world and the deadliest single attack which was at the Kano Central Mosque bombing which killed over 100 people.
According to the survey, over 5,000 people perished from 664 jihadist attacks only in the month of November; in comparison, the terrible and deadly Ebola virus outbreak has killed 7,000 people so far.
The investigation showed that nearly seven people died every hour in November as a result of violence attributed to al-Qaeda, its offshoots and groups that subscribe to a similar ideology.
The study recorded a daily average of 22 such attacks and 168 fatalities. Islamic State (IS) militants – operating in Iraq and Syria – were responsible for more than 2,000 deaths.
The bombing of the Central Mosque in Kano, Nigeria, was the single deadliest jihadist attack in November.
Of the 5,042 people killed in total, a majority – 2,079 – were civilians. Military personnel made up 1,723 deaths. Nearly 1,000 jihadis were reported killed during attacks.
“The data makes it clear that jihadists and al-Qaeda are no longer one and the same,” Peter Neumann, the director of ICSR, writes in an analysis for the BBC.
“Sixty per cent of jihadist deaths were caused by groups that have no formal association with al-Qaeda, and they are the ones who will vie for leadership of the movement,” he says.
“The overall picture is that of an increasingly ambitious, complex, sophisticated and far-reaching movement.”
Bombings accounted for the most deaths overall. Many people also died as a result of gun attacks, shelling and beheadings.
