Young black men are nine times more likely to be killed by US law enforcement officers, a new study has found.

The study released by the British daily, the Guardian said that in 2015, a total of 1134 people were killed by American cops, marking a sharp increase compared to the 444 cases that the FBI had logged in 2014.

Young black men aged between 15 and 34 comprised more than 15 percent of the figure, which is five times higher than white men of the same age.

The new findings, paired with government data on mortality, shows that US police are behind about one in every 65 deaths of young African American men, the report noted.

Overall in 2015, African Americans were killed at twice the rate of white, Hispanic and Native Americans.

The report also found that 25 percent of the African Americans shot dead by police were unarmed, while the same figure for white people stood at 17 percent.

According to Guardian, officers killed at least six innocent bystanders during violent incidents.

The study also shed light on the age diversity among the victims, ranging from six-year-old Jeremy Mardis, in Marksville, Louisiana, to 87-year-old Louis Becker in Catskill, New York. Police officers killed 43 people who were 18-years-old or younger last year.

In all, 89 percent of deaths by police were because of gunshots, four percent were Taser-related, four percent occurred in custody after physical confrontations and three percent were deaths of people hit by police vehicles.

African Americans account for two percent of America’s total population. This is while, according to the Mapping Police Violence project, 40 percent of the police killings in the country’s 60 biggest police departments were black.

Several high-profile police killings of African Americans have sparked nationwide protests in the US over the past two years.