Journalist safety campaigners have declared 2007 one of the most deadly years on record for newsgatherers around the world with the equivalent of two killed each day.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontiere or RSF) said today that 86 journalists were killed while reporting last year, one more than in 2006, along with 32 media assistants. Iraq, Somalia and Pakistan were the most deadly countries.

RSF said in a statement: ‘No country has ever seen more journalists killed than Iraq, with at least 207 media workers dying there since the March 2003 US invasion – more than in the Vietnam War, the fighting in ex-Yugoslavia, the massacres in Algeria or the Rwanda genocide.