Washington:
The US has said that terror strikes in Pakistan reported a dramatic rise in 2008, while India witnessed a drop in such attacks during the year despite the Mumbai carnage.
The increase on number of terrorist incidents in Pakistan is more so in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where Al-Qaida and Taliban have established a safe base.
In one year, the number of terror attacks in FATA jumped from 61 to 321, while in NWFP it skyrocketed from 28 to 870, said Russell Travers, Deputy Director for Information Sharing and Knowledge Development of the National Counter-terrorism Centre of the State Department.
Overall in 2007 in 890 incidents 1,340 people were killed; whereas in the year 2008 as many as 2,293 people were killed in 1,839 incidents in Pakistan.
"The numbers grew dramatically. So you get a sense of the concern that has been expressed as a result of this movement to the east of Taliban-related attacks," Travers told reporters soon after the release of the Country Report on Terrorism 2008.
"In the case of India, the numbers have actually gone down," he said, although there have been terrorist attacks in Assam and those hit by Maoists in central and northern parts of the country.