At least 67 journalists were killed worldwide while on the job in 2015, according to a pair of year-end surveys.
The Paris-based press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said December 29 it had documented 67 killings of journalists and noted most were deliberately targeted for their work in supposedly peaceful countries.
RSF said the circumstances around another 43 deaths of news workers and citizen journalists remain unclear, raising the possibility the total number of news workers killed in the line of duty in 2015 could be higher.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) documented 69 killings. It said 29 of the journalists were slain by Islamic militant groups.
Syria and Iraq were the deadliest place for journalists to work.
Third on the list was France, where Islamic extremist groups killed eight journalists in an attack in Paris in January at the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.