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WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - The U.S. State Department on Thursday released the 1997 "Patterns of Global Terrorism." The annual report said that the number of casualties from international terrorism dropped sharply last year compared with 1996, and the overall total of such incidents fell to one of its lowest annual totals since 1971.

The DoS said that 221 people were killed in terrorist acts in 1997 compared with 314 in 1996. The number of wounded also was down to 693 last year compared with 2,912 the year before that.

Colombia accounted for more than 33 percent of all terrorist attacks worldwide in 1997. The report said that seven U.S. citizens were killed and 21 were wounded last year, compared with 23 dead and 510 wounded in 1996.

There were 304 acts of international terrorism in 1997, about 33 percent were against U.S. targets, and most of those consisted of low-level bombings of multinational oil pipelines in Colombia. The attacks caused damage but no casualties. Colombian rebels regard the pipe- lines as a U.S. target.

The most serious terrorist incident worldwide last year took place in Egypt when terrorists killed 62 persons at a temple in Luxor, Egypt, in November.

The decline in terrorist incidents in recent years is being attributed, in part, to the success of law enforcement agencies in tracking down those responsible and giving them severe prison terms.

The State Department said that Iran was responsible for 13 assassinations last year and remained the "most active'' state sponsor of terrorism in the world despite a more conciliatory posture by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who was inaugurated last August. That was up from the eight assassinations attributed to the Islamic republic in 1996.

The report said: "Notwithstanding some conciliatory statements in the months after President Khatami's inauguration in August 1997, Iran remains the most active state sponsor of terrorism. There is no evidence that Iranian policy has changed, and Iran continues both to provide significant support to terrorist organizations and to assassinate dissidents abroad."

Iran is one of seven countries on the State Department list of nations that engage in state-sponsored terrorism. The others are: Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

The report said that Cuba "no longer supports armed struggle in Latin America and other parts of the world" but maintained close ties with other state sponsors of terrorism and leftist insurgent groups in Latin America.