BEIJING, May 9 (Xinhuanet) -- Africa led the way to the first rise of deadly airliner crashes in a decade, followed by Brazil and Southeast Asia, an international aviation trade group said Thursday.

    "The problem is still Africa, and ... it's a problem of resources and a lack of political will," IATA Director General and Chief Executive Giovanni Bisignani said. "You have many airlines that do not meet (certain safety) standards, and you have governments who are not taking safety seriously."

    Africa remained the most dangerous region in which to fly, with 4.09 accidents per million flights — down modestly from the previous year. North America, Europe, and the countries of the former Soviet Union had the lowest accident rates last year.

    However, the overall number of deaths from flying declined, to 692 last year from 855 a year earlier, according to the annual safety report by the International Air Transport Association. Passenger traffic was up 6 percent during the same period, the Geneva-based organization said.

    Fewer than one in a million flights involving Western-built jets ended with an accident that destroyed or severely damaged the plane. Still, the rise in this so-called hull-loss rate — to 0.75 accidents out of a million flights in 2007, from 0.65 in 2006 — is the first increase in the serious accident rate since 1998, when it stood at 1.4 crashes per million flights.

    IATA counted a total of 100 serious airline accidents in 2007, up from 77 a year earlier. Of those, 57 involved jets, and 43 involved smaller and much less common turboprops.

    Nearly half of all jet accidents occurred on landing, such as the One-Two-Go Airlines MD-82 that skidded off the runway in September in Thailand, killing 88 people.

    "The most risky part of the flight is always the landing," Bisignani said. "It's the most difficult part of the trip."

    (Agencies)