(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) WASHINGTON, June 3 (KUNA) -- The so-called Islamic State (IS) remains the "greatest terrorism threat" while Iran remains the "leading state sponsor for terrorism" globally, according to a US State Department global terrorism report.
In its 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism released on Thursday, the US also said that the Kuwaiti government, during 2015, increased its emphasis on international and internal counterterrorism efforts, "maintaining a robust counterterrorism relationship with the United States." Commenting on the report in a press briefing, State Department Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism Justin Siberell said that despite the total number of terrorist attacks and deaths as a result decreasing worldwide, they increased in some countries.
Terrorist attacks decreased by 13 percent and the total deaths due to these attacks decreased by 14 percent in comparison to 2014, based on a statistical annex conducted by the University of Maryland.
At the same time, terrorist attacks and total deaths in 2015 increased in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria and Turkey.
However, there were fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria.
"This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and resulting fatalities worldwide since 2012," said Siberell.
Terrorist attacks took place in 92 countries, with more than 55 percent taking place in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria, while 74 percent of all deaths due to the attacks occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, and Pakistan.
On the so-called Islamic State (IS), he said despite the losses it sustained last year, it continued to occupy large areas of Iraq and Syria.
After reaching a "high point" in the spring of 2015, its territorial control "began to diminish thereafter," he said.
The group "did not have a significant battlefield victory in Iraq after May of last year, and by the end of 2015, 40 percent of the territory IS once controlled in Iraq had been liberated. This number has continued to increase in 2016," he added.
The loss of territory and coalition airstrikes, which targeted IS's energy infrastructure, modular refineries, petroleum storage tanks and crude oil collection points, as well as bulk cash storage sites, degraded the group's ability to generate revenue, he said.
IS also relies heavily on extortion and the leavening of taxes on local populations under its control, as well as oil smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, looting antiquities, theft and smuggling, foreign donations and human trafficking, he explained.
The US also believes that IS is responsible for several sulfur mustard attacks in Iraq and Syria, including a sulfur mustard attack in Madaya, Syria, on August 21, 2015, even though it did not claim responsibility, he said.
Meanwhile, he said that Al-Qaeda and its affiliate groups were responsible for a number of high-profile, mass casualty attacks in 2015, and still "poses a threat" despite having been degraded severely since 2001.
Separately, the report states that Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Tehran's ally Hezbollah, which remained a significant threat to the stability of Lebanon and the broader region.
Siberell said that confronting Iran's destabilizing activities and its support for terrorism was a "key element" of the US-Gulf Cooperation Council expanded dialogue, after the Camp David leaders' summit in May 2015.
The US, he said, also "expanded our cooperation with partners in Europe, South America and West Africa to develop and implement strategies to counter the activities of Iranian-allied and sponsored groups, such as Hezbollah." A "key trend" throughout 2015 according to the report, he said, was the increased level of international cooperation and coordination to address terrorist threats.
Also, some 45 countries across the international community have put in place legal fundamental reforms to more effectively identify and prosecute foreign terrorist fighters attempting to reach the conflict in Syria and Iraq.
For its part, the US has concluded information-sharing arrangements with 55 international partners to identify and track the travel of suspected terrorists, he revealed, while countries contributing foreign terrorist fighter profiles to Interpol has increased 400 percent over a two-year period.
"We're beginning to see the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to this conflict zone decrease," he said.
On Kuwait, the report states that the government took "several measures to improve the oversight and regulation of charitable fundraising, including monitoring transfers to international beneficiaries and regulating online donations." Kuwait joined the Small Group of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, reflecting its contributions to several lines of effort of the counter-ISIL campaign.
Following IS's first successful attack in the country - a bomb in the Imam Sadeq Mosque - which killed 27 worshippers and injured 227 others in June, some 15 suspects of different nationalities received death and jail sentences in connection with the bombing, it added.
Kuwait's primary counterterrorism organizations, the Ministry of Interior and Kuwait National Guard, were "well-resourced, receptive to suggestions, and actively engaged in training opportunities," said the report.
On Bahrain, it said that during 2015, the government "continued to make gains in detecting, neutralizing, and containing terrorist threats from violent Shia militant groups and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) sympathizers." Bahrain continued to experience periodic bomb attacks from Shia militants throughout the year with targeting focused exclusively on Bahraini security forces.
"In previous years, the attacks mostly involved homemade devices, but in 2015 the militants began to use military-grade explosive materials, such as C-4 and RDX," the report said. (end) sd.gta