The number of police officers killed in the line of duty in the US increased in 2016 compared with the previous year following multiple attacks on police, including ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge.



A new analysis released on Thursday morning by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund showed that 135 officers died on the job in 2016, the highest in five years but still well within the recent yearly average.

For the past 10 years, a yearly average of 151 officers have died on the job, according to the memorial fund.

“We must never forget that 900,000 law enforcement officers nationwide risk their lives every day for our safety and protection,” said the memorial fund’s president and CEO, Craig Floyd, in a statement. “This year, 135 of those men and women did not make it home to their families at the end of their shift.”

But the figure is a fraction of the number of US individuals killed by police. At least 1,058 people have been killed by law enforcement officers this year, according to The Counted, the Guardian’s project to track killings by police. Fatal force by police is disproportionately used against black Americans.

The number of officers gunned down on the job jumped to 64 this year (compared with 41 last year) and included 21 deaths following ambush-style attacks, according to the report. These attacks, especially high-profile ones in Dallas and Baton Rouge, have complicated the nationwide conversation on policing and use of force in the US. As pressure on law enforcement has increased following repeated killings of unarmed black Americans, many in the law enforcement community have countered the criticism by pointing to these attacks on police as evidence of a “war on cops”.

During a fraught week in July, the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police were followed by an ambush of police in Dallas that killed five officers. During a peaceful protest in Dallas against police killings of black Americans, authorities said Micah Johnson opened fire and killed five officers. About a week later, a gunman in Baton Rouge killed three officers.

Barack Obama paid tribute to the five men killed in Dallas, sharing details about their lives and personalities. Brent Thompson was newly married, Obama said, and Lorne Ahrens had bought dinner for a homeless man the night before he was killed. All, he said, answered a call to serve their communities.

“We have public servants, police officers, like the men who were taken away from us,” Obama said. “And that’s what these five were doing last Thursday when they were assigned to protect and keep orderly a peaceful protest in response to the killing of Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge and Philando Castile of Minnesota.”

Two officers in the Des Moines area were killed in an “ambush-style” attack in November. Authorities identified the shooter as Scott Greene, 36, and have charged him with first-degree murder over the killings. Greene shot the officers 20 minutes apart as each sat in his patrol car, according to investigators.

Planned attacks on police killed 21 officers this year, according to the report, an increase from eight officers ambushed last year.

The 64 officers killed by gunfire this year include at least two men who were accidentally shot by colleagues. Rod Lucas, a deputy in Fresno County, California, was accidentally shot and killed by a fellow officer in October. Authorities said at the time that multiple officers were talking inside a building when a detective’s gun accidentally discharged and struck Lucas, killing him. Another officer, Jacai Colson, was killed in March when three men ambushed the Prince George’s County police department building in Maryland and a fellow officer mistook Colson for a suspect and shot him.

Aside from the fatal shootings of officers, 53 men and women were killed in traffic-related deaths and another 18 officers died of other causes while on the job.