The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Paris

At least 86 journalists were killed around the world in 2007, the highest number since 1994, with Iraq, Somalia and Pakistan topping the list of most dangerous places, according to a report released Wednesday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Scores of journalists faced kidnapping, arrest and mass censorship, while dozens of cyber-dissidents were put behind bars, as governments clamped down on press freedom, the Paris-based watchdog reported.

More than half of those killed last year--48--were journalists from the Middle East and Africa, while 17 came from Asia, 12 from Africa, seven from the Americas and two from Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Twenty media assistants were also killed in connection with their work, compared to 32 last year.

Iraq remained the world's deadliest country for the press, with 47 journalists killed-all but one of them Iraqis-taking the overall toll among media workers to 207 since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

"No country has ever seen more journalists killed than Iraqt more than in the Vietnam War, the fighting in ex-Yugoslavia, the massacres in Algeria or the Rwanda genocide," RSF said.

It charged that the Iraqi "government displayed alarming inertia" in the face of the violence and called on both Iraqi and US authorities to "take firm steps to end these attacks."

Somalia was the second deadliest country for the press, with eight journalists killed as fighting pitted Islamist militants against Somalia's transitional government and its ally Ethiopia.

Six journalists were killed in Pakistan, where RSF said suicide attacks and heavy fighting between the army and Islamist militants partly accounted for the deaths.

The annual death toll among journalists has well over doubled since 2002, reaching its highest level since the record violence of 1994, when 103 journalists were killed, nearly half of them in the Rwandan genocide.

According to RSF, 90 percent of all such killings habitually go unpunished.