WASHINGTON, July 25: Fully 70 per cent of Palestinians believe suicide bombing is justified but support for terrorism is declining in the wider Muslim world, according to a comprehensive US survey released on Tuesday (Wednesday in Pakistan).

The Pew Research Centre said its annual “Global Attitudes” report also showed that the United States’s image in Muslim-majority countries remains “abysmal,” and that solid majorities see Washington as a military threat.

Support for terrorist tactics has fallen in seven of the eight countries polled on that question since 2002, the Washington-based group said.

In Lebanon, those believing that suicide bombing is justified often or sometimes has slumped from 74 per cent five years ago to 34 per cent now. In Pakistan, where Islamist violence has surged, the figure is just nine per cent.

In parallel, the Pew group reported “large drops in support for Osama bin Laden,” the Al Qaeda founder.

It cited Jordan, where the percentage of Muslims who have “confidence in bin Laden as a world leader” has slumped 36 percentage points since 2003.

But in the Palestinian territories, 41 per cent said suicide bombing was justified often, and 29 per cent said sometimes. Just six per cent said it was never justified, by far the smallest proportion of the places polled.

“Acceptance of extreme terrorist tactics in the Palestinian territories is remarkably uniform across major demographic groups,” including women, the young and the old, and those less religiously minded, Pew said.

Across the Muslim world, majorities fret that the United States could become a military threat to their country, including 93 per cent of Bangladeshis, 77 per cent of people in Nato ally Turkey, and 73 per cent of Pakistanis.—AFP