THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

The report attributed the fall in terrorism-related deaths to the fall of Islamic State in Iraq and victories in Somalia over al-Shabab insurgents.

"The collapse of ISIL in Syria and Iraq was one of the factors allowing Western Europe to record its lowest number of incidents since 2012, with no deaths attributed to the group in 2018," IEP executive chairman Steve Killelea wrote in a statement, referring to Islamic State by an alternate acronym.

Western Europe also saw numbers of deaths from all terrorist incidents fall for the second year in a row, down from 200 in 2017 to 62 deaths in 2018. The region also recorded its lowest number of incidents since 2012.

However, the report said an increasing number of countries are experiencing terrorist attacks, as a result of the rise of far-right terrorism.

In 2018, 71 countries suffered at least one terrorism-related death, the second-highest number since the beginning of the century.

The report highlights the March 2019 attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, where 51 people were killed as an example of terrorism spreading to countries with "almost no prior history" or terrorist activity" as a result of far-right ideology.

Over the past five years western Europe, North America and Oceania have seen an increase of 320% in attacks committed by far-right terrorists.

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