Sixty-four journalists worldwide were killed in connection to their work in 2007, making it the second deadliest year on record, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported Tuesday.

The New York-based media watchdog, which has been tracking work-related press deaths since 1981, said there were more deaths in 2007 than there had been for more than a decade. The deadliest year was 1994, with 66 journalists killed, mostly in conflicts in Algeria, Bosnia and Rwanda. In 2006, 56 journalists were killed.

The nonprofit organization also reported that 20 media support workers, such as bodyguards and drivers, were killed on the job in the past year.

The group said the deaths are independently investigated to verify that journalists was killed as a result of their work, in crossfire or while on dangerous assignments. In 2007, seven out of every 10 deaths were murders, the organization said.

It is investigating another 22 journalist deaths to determine whether they were work-related.

Iraq was the most dangerous country for the press for the fifth straight year, with 31 deaths. The CPJ said that 24 of those deaths were murders, while the rest occurred in crossfire. A dozen media support workers also died in Iraq in 2007.

"Working as a journalist in Iraq remains one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet," CPJ executive director Joel Simon said in a release. "Members of the press are being hunted down and murdered with alarming regularity. They are abducted and gunpoint and found dead later or shot dead on the spot."

Since the war in Iraq started in March 2003, the CPJ has recorded the deaths of 124 journalists and 49 media workers in the country.

Most of the journalists worked for local media, but nine were employed by international news organizations such as the New York Times, ABC News, Reuters and the Associated Press.

The CPJ reported that Somalia was the second-deadliest country, with seven deaths, followed by Sri Lanka and Pakistan with five each.

Afghanistan and Eritrea were both reported to have two press deaths.

The remaining journalists were killed in Burma (also known as Myanmar), Haiti, Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Turkey, the United States and Zimbabwe.