Aon says terror risk continues to rise.

Iraq, Israel/Palestine, India, Nepal and Russia are the top five locations for terrorist incidents, according Aon Corp.'s updated terrorism map for 2005.

Aon raised the terrorism risk ratings of 31 countries, almost haft of which are in Western Europe. The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Denmark all have been marked as higher risk because of increased Islamic extremist activity. The most recent example was the murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in November 2004 by a Dutch Moroccan Islamic extremist.

Aon ranks the top 40 countries by terrorist incidents and also rates countries for their level of terrorist risk by five levels: low, guarded, elevated, high and severe.

Participation in the Iraq coalition increased the terrorism risk to some countries, said Patti Bassett, executive director in Aon's crisis-management division. Australia, South Korea, Poland, Estonia and Denmark all saw more terrorist activity in 2004, he said. Incidents against countries participating with the United States in Iraq include the attack on the Australian embassy in Indonesia, the recent bombing of a British theater and school in Qatar and the thwarted plot to blow up the Italian embassy in Lebanon.

Groups of al-Qaida operatives are coming into Iraq from other countries, doing short tours of duty in Iraq, then going home to recruit new members, Bassett said.

But countries without a major al-Qaida network can be dangerous, too. Terrorism hot spots considered "severe" include India, because of the large number of often domestic terrorist attacks, he said.

"We're not saying don't invest in these countries. But be aware of the localized threat," Bassett said.

The United States' ranking of "elevated" remained unchanged from last year. The rating, based in part on the number of terrorist attacks, found the United States with 27 incidents from February 2004 to February 2005. Fears that Islamic extremists would stage attacks to try to influence the United Kingdom's general election on May 5 impacted that country's rating of elevated, he said.

Top 10 Terror Incident Locations

Ranked by number of incidents,
February 2004 to February 2005.

                     Number of
Count                Incidents

Iraq                     2,922
Israel/Palestine         1,242
India                      512
Nepal                      388
Russia                     346
Pakistan                   282
Afghanistan                145
Thailand                    97
Bangladesh                  90
Turkey                      73

Source: Aon Ltd.