A haunting image of a grieving Palestinian woman embracing her little niece, killed in an Israeli strike in war-torn Gaza, won the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year Award on Thursday.
The picture taken by Reuters news agency’s Mohammed Salem shows Inas Abu Maamar cradling the body of five-year-old Saly, who was killed with her mother and sister when a missile hit their home in Khan Younes in October.
Salem was in Khan Younes’ Nasser hospital on October 17 when he saw Maamar, 36, sobbing and tightly holding the wrapped body of her relative in the hospital’s morgue.
“It was a powerful and sad moment, and I felt the picture sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” World Press Photo quoted Salem as saying.
“It is a really profoundly affecting image,” added Fiona Shields, jury chairwoman.
“Once you’ve seen it, it’s kind of seared in your mind,” she said. “It works as a kind of literal and metaphorical message really about the horror and futility of conflict.”
“It’s an incredibly powerful argument for peace,” Shields added.
South Africa’s Lee-Ann Olwage won the Story of the Year Award with an intimate portrayal of a Malagasy family caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia.
Venezuelan Alejandro Cegarra won the Long-Term Project Award with his vivid monochrome images of migrants and asylum-seekers trying to cross Mexico’s southern border.
In the Open Format, Ukraine’s Julia Kochetova won with her website that “brings together photojournalism with the personal documentary style of a diary to show what it is like to live with war.”
The 2024 award-winning pictures were selected from 61,062 entries by 3,851 photographers from 130 countries.
The photos are on exhibit at Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk until July 14.
With AFP
