Boko Haram overtakes ISIS as world’s deadliest terror group, report says

WITH its reign of terror in the Middle East, its claim to have brought down a Russian passenger jet and now, the atrocities in Paris, ISIS has commanded global headlines as the world’s most dangerous terror group.

But another militant Islamist organisation overtook ISIS to become the world’s deadliest terrorist group last year, according to a new report.

Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group based mainly in Nigeria’s northern states, was responsible for 6,644 deaths in 2014, an increase of 317 percent from the previous year, according to the Global Terrorism Index, released recently.

By contrast, ISIS, the terror group to which Boko Haram reportedly pledged allegiance in March this year, was responsible for 6,073 deaths.

Between them, the two groups were responsible for more than half (51 percent) the deaths attributed to terrorism, in the deadliest year on record for terror, according to the report.

Internationally, deaths from terrorism experienced a “dramatic rise” in 2014, increasing by 80 percent from the previous year, according to the study by the Institute for Economics and Peace.