Jihadist attacks since the mid-2000s have focused on vulnerable civilians in Western European cities, but the chances of extremists killing a European has fallen dramatically over the past four decades, according to a BBC analysis. , what are the chances of a person becoming a victim of an attack and whether those chances increase or decrease over time, the article asked. Since World War II, the three worst attacks on the European continent, excluding attacks on aircraft, have occurred in the last 16 years. These are the 2004 terrorist attack on the train station in Madrid, which killed 191 people and injured 2.000 people, then the attacks in Paris in November 2015, when 130 people died and 360 were wounded, and the truck attack in Nice, where 86 were killed. person, and 460 were injured. The "pattern" of attacks until 2000 was a large number of incidents with a small number of victims, while now terrorist attacks in Western Europe have become more dangerous, with more deaths, writes the BBC.
The Basque separatist organization ETA handed over a list of weapons caches to French authorities on Saturday after promising to begin the disarmament process.
ETA emerged in 1959 as a student resistance movement against Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and is held responsible for the deaths of 829 people in a series of armed attacks dating back to 1968, in which thousands were injured. Although the number of attacks with a large number of victims has increased drastically, the annual death toll in terrorist attacks has largely decreased, according to the analysis. During the 1970s and 1980s, the annual death toll was more than 150. Since 1990, it has been around 50, although the attacks in Paris and Brussels led to a sharp increase in 2015 and 2016. During the violence in Northern Ireland, the annual risk to civilians was one in 25.000. In France, 2015, a particularly risky year, was one in 400.000.
Statistics, of course, cannot present the whole story, because there are significant differences between today's terrorists and those from previous generations, the article assesses. During the 1970s, extremists were motivated by ideology, mostly a radical form of Marxism, and had a focus on official targets or high-profile figures who represented the embodiment of capitalism. This is not the case in today's world, where embittered jihadists compete for leadership in a world war with mass slaughter. However, in terms of statistics, Europeans today do not face a greater threat of terrorism compared to the previous generation, according to the BBC.
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