The International Federation of Journalists said at least 81 reporters were killed doing their jobs this year, while violence and harassment against media staff has skyrocketed.

In its annual “Kill Report,” the world’s biggest journalists’ organization said the reporters lost their lives in targeted killings, car bomb attacks and crossfire incidents around the world.

More than 250 journalists were in prison in 2017, according to the report.

The number of deaths as of Dec. 29 was the lowest in a decade, down from 93 in 2016. The largest number were killed in Mexico, but many also died in conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, The Associated Press said citing IFJ report.

The IFJ suspected but could not officially confirm that at least one other journalist was killed Thursday in an attack by ISIL Takfiri group’s suicide attack on a Shiite cultural center in Kabul, in which at least 41 people died.

IFJ President Philippe Leruth said that while the drop in deaths “represents a downward trend, the levels of violence in journalism remain unacceptably high.”

He said the IFJ finds it “most disturbing that this decrease cannot be linked to any measure by governments to tackle the impunity for these crimes.”

Meanwhile, the report added that eight women journalists were killed, two in European democracies — Kim Wall in Denmark, who died on the submarine of an inventor she was writing about, and Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was blown up by a bomb placed in her car.

Source: AP