The State Department has said that al-Qaeda is still the greatest terrorist threat to the U.S. and its allies. The Department's annual Country Reports on Terrorism also named Iran as the biggest state sponsor of terrorism. It says that there were 14,499 attacks in 2007, down from 14,570 in 2006. Attacks in Iraq were also down, from 6,628 to 6,212, although in Afghanistan these numbers rose from 969 in 2006 to 1,127 in 2007. Despite the overall attacks being slightly down, the number of terror-related deaths has risen by 8% to 22,000 in 2007. The report explained that "the ability of [Iraqi] attackers to penetrate large concentrations of people and then detonate their explosives may account for the increase in lethality of bombings in 2007." It summed up by saying that al-Qaeda had continued to lose ground, both structurally and in the court of world public opinion. Al-Qaeda is said to have reconstituted some of its pre-9-11 operational capabilities through the exploitation of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), as well as the replacement of captured or killed operational lieutenants.