Aid groups highlight growing threats to staff (AP)

[Yahoo! News]

AP - Aid groups were joining together Wednesday to highlight the growing danger their staff members face in crisis zones around the world, where kidnappings and killings of humanitarian workers are on the rise.

Some 122 aid workers were killed last year, most of them local. The figure is greater than the number of U.N. peacekeeping troops killed in 2008, and compares with only 36 aid worker deaths a decade earlier, according to the U.N.'s humanitarian coordination office.

"We are targeted more and more," U.N. spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said in an interview ahead of World Humanitarian Day. The event, being held for the first time Wednesday, coincides with the sixth anniversary of the bombing of the U.N.'s main offices in Baghdad on Aug. 19, 2003.

The rapid increase is blamed partly on a growth in aid operations in the most lawless parts of the world, with Afghanistan, Darfur and Somalia accounting for almost two-thirds of all attacks.

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