The United States has reported a more than a three-fold increase in attacks categorized as terrorist in 2004.

A State Department report that has been circulating through Congress cited 650 "significant" terrorist attacks in 2004. In 2003, the number of such attacks was 175.

Congressional aides said the figures were released in classified briefings by U.S. intelligence and State Department officials to House and Senate committees over the last two weeks.

The officials cited an increase in attacks in Kashmir, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, Middle East Newsline reportedt.

About 1,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2004, the aides said. They cited the nearly 400 people killed in the Chechen takeover of a Russian school in Beslan and a series of Al Qaida train bombings in Madrid in which nearly 200 people died.

The State Department has said it would release a report on global terrorism without statistics. The department said the National Counterterrorism Center would be responsible for the figures on terror attacks.

"The large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people," Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said in an April 26 letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Waxman's letter disclosed figures in the classified State Department report. He said 300 of the terrorist attacks reported in 2004 took place in India and Pakistan. He said another 198 attacks were reported in Iraq.

In briefings to Congress, State Department officials said attacks deemed terrorist increased by 100 percent in Afghanistan to 27. Terrorist incidents in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip increased from 19 in 2003 to 45 last year.