Palestinian woman with dead niece image wins World Press Photo award

AFP | Amsterdam  

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

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.

The picture taken by Reuters news agency’s Mohammed Salem shows Inas Abu Maamar cradling the body of five-yearold Saly, who was killed with her mother and sister when a missile hit their home in Khan Younis in October.

Salem was in Khan Younis’ 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.

The picture was taken 10 days after the start of the conflict started when militants from Gaza’s Hamas rulers staged an unprecedented attack on Israel. “It was a powerful and a 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.”