The worldwide journalist death toll has risen sharply this year, with 100 lives lost in six months, threatening the record level reached last year.
NEW DELHI: The worldwide journalist death toll has risen sharply this year, with 100 lives lost in six months, threatening the record level reached last year.
According to the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute (INSI), 83 journalists and 17 other media professionals died covering news stories between Jan 1 and June 26, compared with 68 during the corresponding period last year.
INSI recorded 168 casualties in 2006, the worst ever.
The 100 mark was reached in Iraq - the worst killing ground for the news media in modern times - with the killing last week of Hamed Sarhan, 57, by unidentified gunmen on his way home.
Iraq's press syndicate president Shehab al-Tamimi said Sarhan had been a journalist for 30 years in newspapers, magazines and for an Iraqi news agency. He leaves behind a widow and five children.
"This is a shocking development. We have never known such a high death toll half way through a year, and we fear for what might be to come," INSI director Rodney Pinder said in a statement.
According to INSI's records, 72 of the casualties worldwide over the past six months were evidently murdered.
They include Ajmal Naqshbandi and Sayed Agha, kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Taliban along with Italian reporter Daniele Mastrogiacomo, who was released unharmed.
But most of the dead were little known outside their own countries where they were targeted for trying to do their daily jobs.
The biggest increases over the same period in 2006 were in Africa, up from 3 to 18, and Iraq, from 28 to 42.
After Iraq, the countries where most journalists were murdered in the first half of this year were Afghanistan - 5, Haiti and Philippines - 4 each, Somalia, Palestine and India - 3 each, and Sri Lanka, Mexico and Brazil - 2 each.
INSI is a coalition of media organisations, press freedom groups, unions and humanitarian campaigners seeking to create a culture of safety in the media.
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