Some 60 journalists around the world lost their lives in the course of their work in 2014, the Committee to Protect Journalists said, and more than 40 percent of them were murdered, according to the Associated Press.

The CPJ report released early Tuesday said that while the number of the killed was down by 10 from the previous year, the death toll included an "unusually high proportion" of international journalists. Still, three fourths of the fatalities continued to be among local newsmen.

This year has seen "historic levels of journalists who've been killed and imprisoned," Courtney Radsch, an advocacy director at CPJ, told TIME magazine. The organization said that the last three years have been the deadliest since the organization started compiling records in 1992.

Part of the alarming trend "is due to the rise in violent conflict, which is inherently dangerous," Radsch said. But violence is also the result of "increasing animosity of government and non-state actors toward journalists," she added.

Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war between Islamists, more moderate rebels and forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad, likewise proved the most dangerous spot for the third time in a row, the Huffington Post said. Seventeen journalists were killed there this year, bringing the total to 79 in the conflict, which erupted in 2011.

Other hot spots included Gaza, where four journalists and three media workers killed; Ukraine, whose conflict with Russia led to the deaths of five newsmen and two media workers; and Iraq, where ongoing violence claimed the lives of five journalists.

Some countries were added to report after journalists had been able to work safely for a number of years. In the south American country of Paraguay, a newsman was killed for the first time since 2007; in the southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, which is also known as Burma,  the killing in custody of a freelance journalist was the first such incident since 2007.

The Associated Press, meanwhile, lamented the death of its photographer Anja Niedringhaus, who was shot to death while covering elections in Afghanistan.