Baghdad  - The Iraqi Ministry of Interior has launched investigations into cases of 48 media personnel who were either killed or subjected to acts of violence, the director of the ministry's National Command Center said Monday.

"Investigations have been launched following the establishment of a partnership with the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory (JFO) with the aim of protecting journalists while covering news stories," Major General Abdel Kareem Khalaf told Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

In late September, the JFO launched a joint project with the Interior Ministry aimed at protecting media workers and to allow foreign journalists to enter the country.

Khalaf pointed out that the ministry has ordered the arrest of those involved in crimes against journalists.

"Some of them are currently being interrogated, while others confessed to having committed those crimes," Khalaf told VOI.

The JFO is a Baghdad-based non-governmental Iraqi organization that monitors violations and aggression against the media in Iraq.

Journalists are a constant target of assassination attempts in the country, with the situation being described as the deadliest for journalists in recent history.

The latest incident took place in September when head of the Iraqi journalists' union, Muaid al-Lami, was critically wounded in a bomb blast at the union's headquarters in Baghdad.

In February, Shihab al-Tamimi, the then chief of the press syndicate, died from injuries he sustained from a targeted shooting in Baghdad.

The New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said 135 journalists and 51 support workers had been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Thirty-two journalists were killed in 2007, the CPJ reported on its website. Ten have died so far this year. (dpa)