Afghanistan has been deemed the most dangerous country to be a humanitarian aid worker, according to a report released on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
The number of attacks on aid workers soared last year to the highest level on record, Reuters reported. In all, 155 aid workers were killed, 171 wounded and 134 kidnapped in 2013, a rise of 66 percent compared with 2012, according to the Humanitarian Outcomes report, published on World Humanitarian Day.
It said three quarters of the attacks took place in Afghanistan, Syria, South Sudan, Pakistan and Sudan amid worsening violence, with 81 of the attacks occurring in Afghanistan alone, according to Reuters.
The death toll for 2014 shows little sign of being a lower number, Reuters reported. So far, 79 humanitarians have been killed this, including several in Gaza, according to provisional figures.
"One aid worker killed in the line of duty is one too many," Valerie Amos, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement ahead of a memorial service for aid workers to be held in London's Westminster Abbey on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
"Nurses, engineers, logisticians and drivers ... all take great risk doing their work in sometimes extremely dangerous and difficult circumstances," she added.
The United Nations General Assembly in 2008 declared Aug. 19 World Humanitarian Day to mark the day in 2003 when 22 people who were killed in a bomb attack on U.N. offices in Baghdad, according to Reuters.
The main reason for the increased attacks on aid workers is the changing nature of warfare, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Reuters reported.
Most wars used to be fought between national armies, but the majority are now waged within countries, and involve rebel groups who often target civilians on a massive scale, according to Reuters.
