NICE ATTACK

How the attack in Nice compares to France’s past terror incidents

We chart decades of terror attacks in Western Europe

A man reacts near bouquets of flowers near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday, in Nice, France, July 15, 2016. (Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)

A man reacts near bouquets of flowers near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday, in Nice, France, July 15, 2016. (Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)

The attack in Nice was, in terms of casualties, the second-most devastating terror event in France’s modern history. The most violent was last year’s Nov. 15 killings in Paris. That event ended with more casualties than in all French terror attacks in the last four decades combined.

In Western Europe, both the number of terror attacks and number of deaths by terrorist attack have fallen from highs in the 1970s and ’80s, when attacks were largely fuelled by radical political groups on the left and right, and nationalist groups. Before the 2015 Paris attacks, the last time terrorist-related deaths were so high in Western Europe was more than a decade ago, in 2004, when the Madrid train bombings killed 191 people and wounded 2,050. (The data below end in 2015.)

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