AMSTERDAM: Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem won the prestigious 2024 World Press Photo of the Year award on Thursday for his image of a Palestinian woman cradling the body of her five-year-old niece in the Gaza Strip.

The picture was taken on Oct 17, 2023, at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, where families were searching for relatives killed during Israeli bombing of the Palestinian enclave.

Salem’s winning image portrays Inas Abu Maamar, 36, sobbing while holding Saly’s sheet-clad body in the hospital morgue.

“Mohammed Salem received the news of his WPP award with humility, saying that this is not a photo to celebrate but that he appreciates its recognition and the opportunity to publish it to a wider audience,” Reuters Global Editor for Pictures and Video, Rickey Rogers, said at a ceremony in Amsterdam.

“He hopes with this award that the world will become even more conscious of the human impact of war, especially on children,” Rogers said, standing in front of the photo at the Nieuwe Kerk in the Dutch capital.

The haunting image showed a Palestinian woman cradling the body of her niece at a hospital morgue in Khan Yunis

Announcing its annual awards, the Amsterdam-based World Press Photo Foundation said it was important to recognise the dangers facing journalists covering conflicts. It said 99 journalists and media employees had been killed covering the Israeli aggression.

“The work of press and documentary photographers around the world is often done at high risk,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, the organisation’s executive director.

“This past year, the death toll in Gaza pushed the number of journalists killed to a near-record high. It is important to recognise the trauma they have experienced to show the world the humanitarian impact of the war.” Salem, a Palestinian aged 39, has worked for this news agency since 2003. He also won an award in the 2010 World Press Photo competition.

The jury selected the winning photos from 61,062 entries by 3,851 photographers from 130 countries.

The jury said Salem’s 2024 winning image was “composed with care and respect, offering at once a metaphorical and literal glimpse into unimaginable loss.” “I felt the picture sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” Salem said when the image was first published in Nov.

“People were confused, running from one place to another, anxious to know the fate of their loved ones, and this woman caught my eye as she was holding the body of the little girl and refused to let go.” Salem’s wife had given birth to their child days before he took the shot. The photograph is “profoundly affecting,” said jury me­m­ber Fiona Shields, head of photography at Guardian News & Media.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2024