How many terrorist attacks occurred in the US in 2024?

1. What the question actually asks and why it’s hard to answer

Asking “how many terrorist attacks occurred in the US in 2024” demands a single canonical incident count, but the academic and government ecosystems do not publish a unified annual tally covering every definitional edge—datasets differ on inclusion rules (domestic vs. international inspiration, cartel violence, notable-only reporting), time cutoffs, and whether plots are counted alongside completed attacks, which means the available sources cannot be simply summed to produce one indisputable number ^{[6] [1] [2]}.

2. What expert trackers and government products provide

The Global Terrorism Database and START at UMD maintain long-running incident databases and methodological notes that explain why aggregating events is nontrivial; the GTD historically covers through 2020 in its public update cycle and emphasizes definitional consistency, while other trackers continue annual or rolling updates with different scopes ^{[1] [2]}. The Department of State issues Country Reports on Terrorism and DHS issues threat assessments, but those documents contextualize threat levels more than producing a single domestic incident count for 2024 ^{[7] [8]}.

3. Jihadist incidents and plots in 2024 — a concrete partial figure

The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ analysis of jihadist activity in the U.S. reported that the first 11 months of 2024 recorded 21 jihadist plots and attacks, and that jihadist cases composed roughly a quarter of recorded U.S. terrorist plots and attacks that year even as the absolute number remained lower than earlier peaks linked to ISIS territorial control ^[4]. The ADL’s review of Islamist-linked incidents similarly documents seven separate incidents in 2024 involving five unsuccessful plots and two actual attacks, illustrating that several jihadist-related cases involved arrests and foiled operations rather than mass-casualty events ^[5].

4. The dominant domestic-terrorism context complicating totals

Multiple analyses emphasize that the majority of recent U.S. terrorist attacks and plots have been domestic in origin—particularly far‑right and anti‑government violence—and that this domestic slate has produced an uptick in incident counts in recent years, making any national 2024 total heavily dependent on whether trackers include domestic plots, attempts, and ideologically varied actors in their definition ^{[3] [9] [10]}.

5. Why different trackers give different impressions and possible agendas

Variation in published numbers reflects methodological choices—some lists omit cartel violence or non‑notable incidents, some merge same‑day attacks at a location, and some count plots as attacks—which can be leveraged implicitly by outlets or advocates to emphasize either foreign terrorism or domestic threats; CSIS and DHS reporting both warn that media focus on foreign-linked terrorism can obscure the scale and lethality of domestic violent extremism ^{[6] [11] [10]}.

6. Bottom line — what can be stated with confidence

From the supplied reporting it is not possible to produce a single, verified count of all terrorist attacks in the U.S. in 2024 because no provided source publishes that consolidated annual figure; however, subject-specific tallies in these sources show at least 21 jihadist plots/attacks in the first 11 months of 2024 (CSIS) and ADL documents two actual Islamist‑linked attacks that year amid several foiled plots, while broader datasets and government analyses underscore a larger number of domestic extremist plots and attacks whose inclusion would raise any total substantially ^{[4] [5] [3] [1]}.