Terror attacks more than tripled across the globe last year, with much of the increase traced to incidents in Iraq, US government figures released by a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives say.
Based on a briefing that federal officials gave congressional aides, Representative Henry Waxman said about 650 significant terror attacks occurred last year, more than three times the record 175 that the government tallied in 2003.
In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his staff circulated to the media on Tuesday, Waxman said last year's figure may be underestimated significantly. Many incidents that most Americans would regard as terror attacks were excluded from State Department data, he said, because they did not meet the State Depart-ment's definition.
The department announced last week it would stop its annual publication of statistical accounts of incidents and would turn the task over to a counterterrorism center that Congress established last year.
Waxman has been critical of the State Department's terror reporting. He accused Rice last week of denying Congress and the public important information about the number of incidents by withholding the report.
"There appears to be a pattern in the administration's approach to terrorism data: Favorable facts are revealed while unfavorable facts are suppressed," Waxman said in a letter to the department's acting inspector general, Cameron Hume, demanding an investigation.
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