Sobering Chart Shows ISIS Is the Terror Group With Most Mass Killings Since 2000
It has the highest number of coordinated attacks among all terror groups.
— -- The coordinated attacks in France on Friday were the deadliest in the country since World War II, but the number of terror attacks with more than 100 fatalities has been growing globally in recent years.
Part of the reason for that growth is the quick and violent rise of ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for this latest strike in Paris.
Even though ISIS is a relatively new group, it has been responsible for the highest number of attacks in the past 14 years, according to data collected by the Global Terrorism Database run by the University of Maryland and released Sunday.
The data spans from 2000 until 2014, so it does not include any attacks from this year. But even in that time frame, ISIS's deadly spree that started in earnest in 2013 still puts the militant group at the top of the list.
The vast majority of the coordinated attacks by ISIS have taken place in Iraq and Syria, and only recently have they begun to expand outside the war-torn area.
This graph represents a number of coordinated attacks and each attack does not have more than 100 fatalities. Of the 757 attacks, 10 attacks have had 100 or more deaths, according to the Global Terrorism Database.
The graph below shows the total number of attacks per year, including both coordinated attacks and uncoordinated attacks. The Global Terrorism Database defines coordinated events as those in which perpetrators execute multiple attacks simultaneously or nearly simultaneously.
When broken down by year, ISIS’s dramatic rise becomes even more clear. The group, which evolved out of al Qaeda in Iraq, stepped up its attacks amid the violent chaos of the Syrian civil war. Since, it has spread the bloodletting back into and across Iraq. Another group that has made a nefarious mark on the global stage in recent years is Boko Haram, which only appears starting in 2009.