PARIS (AFP) - Last year was the deadliest year in a decade for journalists around the world, mainly because of the number of reporters killed in Iraq, the media rights group Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday.

At least 53 journalists and 15 media assistants (drivers, fixers, translators, technicians, security guards) were killed last year, said the Paris-based group, which is known by its French initials, RSF.

Iraq accounted for 19 reporters and 12 media assistants deaths, it said, adding that attacks by insurgents were responsible for most of that number.

The US army killed four of the reporters - employees of the Arab television stations Al-Arabiya and Al-Iraqiya - in incidents in March and April, it said.

According to the RSF figures, the next worst country was the Philippines with six deaths, followed by Bangladesh with four.

Those and other deaths in Asia were believed to be because the journalists were "investigating delicate matters such as corruption, drug-trafficking and gangsterism," RSF said.

The deaths in the Philippines occurred in areas outside Manila where a feudal system rife with drugs, gambling and corruption runs unchecked, Carlos Conde, secretary general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, told AFP last month.

Mexico saw three journalist deaths, while Russia, Nicaragua, Brazil, Peru, Sri Lanka and Nepal all had two deaths recorded.

Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Gambia, Haiti, India, Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia and Serbia-Montenegro each recorded one death.

The figures were the worst published by the RSF since 1995, when 64 journalists were killed around the world.

The full RSF Press Freedom 2004 report can be found on the www.rsf.org website.

The organisation noted that several journalists also went missing, including a French cameraman working for the British network ITN who disappeared at the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq, and an Iraqi in that country who vanished last August.

A Canadian-French journalist in Ivory Coast has not been heard from since last April, and four journalists have been kidnapped by Maoist rebels, RSF said.
In Asia, several countries were singled out as having "the least press freedom in the world," namely North Korea, Myanmar, China, Vietnam and Laos.

In Europe, government control of national television in Russia gave rise to "flagrantly biased" coverage of the school hostage drama in the southern city of Beslan, where nearly 350 people - half of them children - were killed.

The contested presidential elections in Ukraine also saw attacks on the press, and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko "made every effort to systematically silence the few dissident voices" in his country, RSF said.

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