09927

06/05/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09927

VICTIMS OF TERRORISM

More than three-thousand people were murdered last September 11^th in the al-Qaida attacks on the United States. Although most of the victims were Americans, people from seventy-seven other countries also died at the hands of the terrorists. No one can ever forget the infamy of September 11^th. But it should also not be forgotten that terrorism claimed the lives of many other people around the world last year. And that it continues to claim many lives today.

The U.S. State Department recently released its annual report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism." In addition to the September 11^th attacks, the report lists dozens of other significant terrorist incidents in 2001.

On May 6^th, 2001, one-hundred people were reported killed in a massacre by UNITA rebels in the Angolan town of Caxito [kah-SHE-toe]. On October 1^st, thirty-one people were killed when a bomb was set off at the assembly building in Srinagar, in the part of Kashmir controlled by India. In India itself, terrorism claimed fifteen lives on February 9^th, 2001, fifteen more on July 22^nd, seventeen on August 17^th, and thirteen on December 13^th.

In Somalia, terrorists killed eleven people on March 27^th, 2001. In Burundi, twenty-eight people were killed in two attacks in April. A May 5^th attack in Afghanistan killed twelve. Israel suffered numerous attacks from Palestinian terrorists in 2001, including suicide bombings in June, August, and December that killed forty-three people.

Terrorist attacks have continued in 2002, especially in Israel and Kashmir. On March 27^th in Israel, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed twenty-nine people as they gathered to celebrate the Jewish Passover holiday. On May 14^th in Kashmir, a terrorist shooting attack killed thirty-four men, women, and children.

As President George W. Bush said at the United Nations last November, "We must unite in opposing all terrorists, not just some of them. In this world, there are good causes and bad causes, and we may disagree on where the line is drawn. Yet, there is no such thing as a good terrorist. No national aspiration, no remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent."