2016 began on a deadly note.
Just 12 days into the new year, a suspected I-S suicide bomber thought to have crossed from Syria killed at least 10 people, most of them German tourists, in Istanbul.
Turkey has become a target for Islamic State, with two bombings in 2015 blamed on the group.
Three days later, in Burkina Faso, at least 28 people from 18 different nationalities died and others were taken hostage when Islamist gunmen stormed the Splendid Hotel in the capital, Ouagadougou.
That attack was claimed by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Burkinabe security forces began an assault to reclaim the hotel in the early hours of January 16th and entered the lobby, part of which was on fire, and freed around 30 hostages including the labour minister.
In March, a suicide car bomb tore through a transport hub in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on the 13th, killing 37 people and wounding at least 125 more.
The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, linked to P-K-K militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency against Turkey, said they carried out the bombing and vowed further strikes to avenge military operations in the largely Kurdish southeast.
That same day, gunmen from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb drank beer at a beachside bar before shooting 18 people dead at an Ivory Coast resort town of Grand Bassam.
Nine days later in the Belgian capital, suicide bombers struck Brussels Airport in the first of two attacks that also hit the city's metro train, killing at least 35 and wounding over 300.
The attacks triggered security alerts across western Europe and bringing some cross-border transport to a halt.
In Pakistan, a suicide bomber killed at least 65 people, mostly women and children, at a park in Lahore (27/3), in an attack claimed by a Pakistani Taliban faction.
Officials said more than 300 other people were wounded in the attack.
In June, in Turkey, a car bomb ripped through a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour on the 7th, killing 11 people and wounding 36.
The explosion happened near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayor's office.
And on the 12th, a man armed with an assault rifle killed 50 people at a packed gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida in the worst mass shooting in United States history.
President Barack Obama described it as an act of terror and hate.
Police killed the shooter, who was identified as 29 year-old Omar Mateen.
Officials said he called 9-1-1 on the morning of the attack and declared he supported I-S.
In July, the self-proclaimed Islamic State claimed responsibility for another attack, this time in Iraq's capital.
At least 300 people were killed and 200 injured in two bombings that hit Baghdad, nearly all of them in a blast targeting a busy shopping area as locals celebrated Ramadan.
Ten days later, a man killed 84 people and wounded scores when he drove a heavy truck at high speed into a crowd that had watched Bastille Day fireworks in the French Riviera city of Nice [neess].
The armed driver, identified as Tunisian man Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, also opened fire on crowds before police shot him dead.
I-S has claimed the Nice attack but authorities say they have yet to find evidence there were any actual links to the militant group.
French President Francois Hollande described the attack as a monstrosity.
And 11 people were wounded in the United States in November, in a car and knife attack at Ohio State University.
It was claimed by I-S, which called attacker Abdul Razak Ali Artan one of its "soldiers".
