Deaths related to acts of terrorism

FOI REF: ​FOI/2023/4869

You asked

Please provide the number of deaths in the UK due to terrorism committed by Islamic extremists between the dates of 1/1/1970 and 1/1/2023 - or as close as you can to these dates.

We said

Thank you for your request

We hold mortality statistics for England and Wales. Figures are based on the information recorded at death registration and includes deaths of people who were usually resident in England or Wales.

For Scotland and Northern Ireland death registration statistics, you will need to contact National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Centre respectively.

Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. The conditions mentioned on the death certificate are then coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:

a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or

b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury

For deaths registered in 2000 to 2022 Acts of terrorism defined by the International Classification of Diseases, ICD-10 codes X85 - Y09 Assault,

For deaths registered in 1979 to 2000 are defined by  International Classification of Diseases ICD-9. We would use the following codes E968.0 to E968.9 Assault.

For deaths registered between 1970 and 1979 are defined by International Classification of Diseases ICD-8. We would use the following codes E960 to E969 Assault.

For all the above ICD codes there is no way to differentiate between a non-terrorist assault and an assault involving terrorists of any affiliation.

Our NOMIS webservice will provide deaths due to assault using ICD-10 codes X85 - Y09 from 2013 to 2021.

• Select timeframe 2013 to 2021
• Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).  
• Select Age - All ages or 5-year age bands.  
• Select Gender - Total or Male/Female  
• Select rates - All deaths, rates or percentage of population for example.  
• Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available).  
• Select format (Excel or CSV for example)  

Historic data can be found in our 21^st Century Mortality files from 2001 to 2021. Data pre 2000 can be found on the 20^th Century Mortality files by searching by ICD code.

We may be able to provide further breakdown by creating a bespoke request using the above codes and searching the coroner's text. However, we would advise caution when using this data. A text search for the word's 'terrorism' and 'terrorist attack' was applied to records where the underlying cause of death was assault. Although this may identify records where terrorism was mentioned, the data is not considered completely reliable because the coroner will not always record detailed information regarding the deceased's history. Therefore, these figures represent how many records terrorism was mentioned on the death certificate but are likely to be an undercount.

If you would like to discuss this further or to obtain a quote for a bespoke request, please contact the Health Analysis and Pandemic Insight Customer Services team (HAPI) at Health.Data@ons.gov.uk

ONS Crime Statistics

We publish Homicide in England and Wales: year ending March 2022 which is analyses of information held within the Home Office Homicide Index and contains detailed record-level information about each homicide recorded by police in England and Wales.

Figure 1 presents homicide rates in England and Wales, for year ending December 1970 to year ending March 2022. The accompanying dataset is available to download here.

The data presented in Figure 1 includes the following homicide data and are available to download in excel format here.

• Year ending March 2006 includes 52 victims of the 7 July London bombings.
• Year ending March 2017 includes 96 victims of Hillsborough and four victims of the Westminster Bridge attack.
• Year ending March 2018 incudes 31 victims of the terrorist attacks that involved multiple victims, including the Manchester Arena bombing, and the London Bridge attack. It also includes 11 victims from the Shoreham air crash.

For further information about these data, please contact crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk.