Mumbai:
In a world dotted with conflicts of all kinds, raging civil wars , bloody sectarian violence and terrorism, South Asia emerges as the worst affected. According to the Global Terrorism Index, that profiles data on terrorism from across the world, India is the fourth most affected in the world by terrorism, after Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Iraq is the worst hit by terror. It's said to be the bloodiest battle ground in the world where nearly 1800 people were killed in terror attacks in in 2011, most of which took place in Baghdad.
In the same year 1468 people died in Pakistan, 1293 people died in Afghanistan and 402 in India because of terror attacks.
Since Mumbai serial blasts of 1993, over 1300 people have died in major terror strikes in India.
Among all the acts of terror perpetrated against India on Indian soil, the 1993 serial blasts of Mumbai remain the deadliest. 257 people lost their lives and over 700 were injured when 13 bombs of RDX went off on the afternoon of 12th March, 1993.
Nearly twenty years have passed and the main accused in the case, including mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, are still at large.
In America, there has been no death due to terror since the 2001 September 11 attacks when two planes crashed into the twin towers of World Trade Centre.
But it remains the worst single attack ever by terror groups, in this case Al Qaida. 2823 people were killed.
The last big terror attack in the United Kingdom were the co-ordinated attacks on the London
Underground and a bus. 52 people lost their lives that day.
One of the worst terror strikes that targeted children was the attack on a school in Beslan in South Russia where militants laid siege for three days in 2004. It was the first day of school after summer break on September 1, when mostly Chechen militants took over the school. The siege ended after three days when Russian security forces stormed the building. By then 186 children and 154 adults were massacred.
Tourist havens like Bali in Indonesia too have suffered the brunt of terror when foreigners were targeted in a nightclub in 2002. 202 people lost their lives.
While conflicts , civil wars, skirmishes rage across the African world, and most intensely now in Syria where a civil war that started with demonstrations against President Bashar Al Assad in March 2011, ignited by the Arab Spring protests in the region, still continues. According to United Nation figures, nearly seventy thousand people have lost their lives in the Syrian uprising.
These figures only illustrate our intensely polarized and strife ridden world, our red earth.