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A Swedish journalist gunned down in lawless Somalia Friday brought to more than 20 the number of journalists killed worldwide this year, as they face increasing danger and risk of being targeted trying to do their jobs.
Martin Adler, a Swedish photographer and reporter, became the 26th journalist killed in 2006, according to a tally by the Paris-based Reporters without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF). Another 12 media assistants have also lost their lives this year, RSF added.
"This was an appalling murder, one that turns journalists into pawns in the hands of rival armed clans that use such crimes in their battle for power," the press freedom group said in a statement about the latest killing in Somalia.
The journalist's most dangerous assignment remains Iraq where half of this year's killings took place, making it the deadliest war for reporters since World War II, according to RSF.
In the past two months alone, a British cameraman and a sound technician working for the US broadcaster CBS were killed in May while traveling with a US military convoy that came under attack in Baghdad.
Early this month, two Iraqi journalists working for local television channel Al-Nahrain TV were found dead in a canal after being stopped on their way home by gunmen dressed in police uniforms.
Those deaths reflect the reality that the majority of murdered journalists are not foreign correspondents but people killed in their own country.
Journalists have become deliberate targets, Rodney Pinder, director of the International News Safety Institute, told a conference in Edinburgh last month.
"Murder remains the cheapest, most effective and risk-free form of censorship," he said.
The Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), whose 2006 count stands at 21 journalists killed excluding the latest in Somalia, has urged news organizations to better protect their staff and give them training on coping with warzone situations.
"Three times more journalists die in conflicts than humanitarian workers," Pinder said.
Last year was the deadliest for journalists in a decade, with 63 reporters and five media aides killed, according to RSF.
Not since 1995, "when the Islamist Algerian groups were trying to attack everyone who did not back them," has the toll been so high, RSF said in its annual report.
With 27 deaths, 24 of them in Iraq, the Middle East was the most dangerous place for the press in 2005, followed by the Philippines where seven journalists were killed.
The danger of trying to cover the war in Iraq, where journalists have also been the target of kidnappings, is further exposed when compared with other conflicts, the Committee to Protect Journalists has said.
Since the March 2003 US-led invasion in Iraq to May of this year, 69 reporters, most of them Iraqi, were killed, the committee said.
That death toll matches the figures for World War II when 68 reporters were killed, according to the US-based Freedom Forum.
Almost a third of the world's population lives in countries with no press freedom and in Africa "impunity is not an unfortunate hazard, it is the rule," RSF says.
In Mogadishu, witnesses said Adler was shot in the chest at close range by an unknown gunman while covering a mass demonstration organized by the Islamic courts that seized control of the Somali capital this month.
Another grim statistic from the news safety institute: Only 10 percent of reporters' killers were ever brought to justice.
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AFP 231715 GMT 06 06
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