April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Terrorists killed more than 14,500 civilians in 11,000 attacks across the globe last year, with Iraq the biggest scene of violence and suicide bombings a more frequent tactic, the U.S. government said in a report.

Fifty-six of those killed were Americans, the State Department report said. Three thousand of the deaths were attributable to 360 suicide bombings.

``We saw indications of an increase in suicide bombings,'' the report said, noting that the July 7 bombings in London that killed 54 people were the first such attacks in Europe.

U.S. policy makers this year have begun to talk of a ``long war'' against Islamist terrorists, and the report today offered evidence to support that threat and its global extent.

``If you look at the ups and downs of this battle, it's going to take us a long time to win this,'' State Department anti-terrorism chief Henry Crumpton told reporters in Washington. ``You can't measure this month by month or year by year. It's going to take a lot longer.''

The report sums up a year in which suicide bombers attacked in Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Indonesia. The most significant attack for which Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group claimed responsibility was the Nov. 9 suicide bombings of hotels in Amman, in which at least 57 people died, the report said.

Afghan Attacks

Afghanistan, which used to harbor al-Qaeda, had a ``marked increase'' in suicide bombings, according to the report.

Attackers bent on suicide usually set off explosives strapped to their bodies or detonate bombs carried in vehicles they are riding in.

About 30 terror attacks took place worldwide every day on average last year, according to the U.S. tally. There were 25,000 people wounded, and 35,000 were kidnapped in terrorist incidents, the report said.

The level of violence directed against civilians in Iraq was ``substantially higher'' than in 2004, according to the report. The number of terrorist incidents in the country in which at least 10 people were killed more than doubled.

U.S. officials have attributed the stepped-up violence to attempts to disrupt elections for a government and a constitution.

Definition Broadened

Officials said the U.S. broadened its definition of terrorism in 2005 to include more types of incidents, making data for previous years ``not comparable,'' Russell Travers, a deputy director at the National Counterterrorism Center, told reporters.

One reason for the change was that the narrow definition had excluded incidents such as the 2004 killing of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim who objected to a movie critical of Islam, Travers said.

Under the old definition, the State Department counted terrorist incidents in the hundreds, Travers said. With the new definition, they are counted in the thousands.

Of the 40,000 people wounded or killed in terrorist attacks last year, about 6,500 were police and 1,000 were children, Travers said. The Middle East and South Asia were particularly hard hit, accounting for almost 75 percent of the attacks and 80 percent of the fatalities, he said. The majority of noncombatant fatalities worldwide were in Iraq.

Al-Qaeda Threat

The al-Qaeda terrorist network remains a threat, with plans to attack the U.S. in a manner to match ``or even surpass the terror of 9/11,'' Crumpton said.

While al-Qaeda's leaders continued to inspire terrorist violence in 2005 and are resilient and adaptable, they were not able to direct it as fully as in the past, the report said.

``Al-Qaeda is not the organization it was four years ago,'' the State Department said. The group's leaders are scattered and on the run, while its Afghan safe haven is gone. Its relationship with the Taliban militia has diminished, and its finances and logistics have been disrupted, Crumpton said.

For these reasons, ``al-Qaeda and its affiliates are desperate to claim Iraq as their own,'' Crumpton said. ``We and our allies, along with the emerging Iraqi government, must deny Iraq to al-Qaeda.''

Lone Attackers

The year also saw an increase in small, autonomous cells and even lone attackers, who relied on the Internet, satellite communications and international commerce to achieve their goals, the report says. The terrorists' ability to exploit technology makes them ``extremely difficult'' to detect or counter, the report said.

Terrorists are also exploiting some of the same international networks used by criminals to improve their mobility and avoid detection, the report said. And they are becoming more sophisticated in their use of propaganda.

Because of looser, less centralized terrorist networks, ``we may face a larger number of smaller attacks, less meticulously planned, and local, rather than transnational in scope,'' Crumpton said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Judy Mathewson in Washington at jmathewson@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 28, 2006 16:01 EDT