Pakistani journalists and politicians pray to pay tribute to late journalist Saleem Shahzad in Islamabad on June 1, 2011. (Farooq Naeem/AFP/Getty Images)

At least 46 journalists were killed across the world in 2011, with Pakistan again taking the dubious honor as being the most deadly country for reporters, according to a new report.

New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that deaths during dangerous assignments, including covering Arab Spring protests throughout the Middle East and North Africa, reached record levels last year.

Almost half of the deaths in 2011—low as a ratio of all deaths compared to previous years—were targeted killings. Of the 21 killings, seven were in Pakistan and five of those were specifically ordered and include Saleem Shahzad, who reported for Asia Times Online and was killed after he exposed links between the Pakistani navy and al-Qaida.

“The government should be taking it seriously and realize it is their duty to protect journalists. If a journalist is threatened, the culprit should be brought to justice,” reporter Umar Cheema told the CPJ.

Around 40 percent of all those killed were photographers or camera operators.

CPJ also noted that although Internet journalists rarely appeared in their death reports before 2008, that’s not the case anymore.

“Online journalists constitute an ever-greater proportion of the front-line reporting corps [and] the number of victims who worked online has increased steadily,” CPJ said.

An alarming number of journalists, 17, were killed in the line of duty, while covering dangerous assignments.

While the death toll of 46 was two higher than in 2010, the watchdog cautioned that another 35 deaths were still under investigation and may have been related to work as journalists.

Five journalists were killed in Iraq, where there has been continued violence after U.S. troops withdrew from the country. Five deaths were also recorded in Libya, which descended into civil war in the popular uprising to oust leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Three were killed in Mexico, which CPJ said were directly related to investigations into the killings of other reporters in the country.

Anti-press violence in Mexico was described as pervasive. “Journalists continue to face a dark choice: Censor their own work or be at risk” of being attacked by criminal gangs.

In Bahrain, two journalists died under dubious conditions while in government custody during protests that spread throughout the country last year, CPJ said.

Four were killed while covering the unrest in Syria, said CPJ executive director Joel Simon in an editorial appearing in the Huffington Post. He added that the deaths include a journalist who was “gunned down at a Homs checkpoint in December.”

Meanwhile, the CPJ said 179 journalists were imprisoned in the past year, which is the highest figure in about a decade. Iran, China, Burma, Vietnam, Syria, Eritrea, and Turkey were the top jailers of journalists.

“In China, authorities spooked by the possibility of an online uprising, cracked down on dissent, arresting critics and imposing new controls on online speech,” wrote Simon.

“Governments from Iran to China also took notice and re-calibrated their repression to deal with the emerging threat.”