Image of grief-stricken Palestinian woman wins 2024 World Press Photo award
A heart wrenching image of a Palestinian woman holding the body of her dead niece in Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital captured by Reuters’ photographer Mohammed Salem has won the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year Award.
[The 2024 World Press Photo of the Year is of Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embracing the body of her five-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis (File: Mohammed Salem/Reuters)]
Amsterdam (The Netherlands): A heart wrenching image of a Palestinian woman holding the body of her dead niece in Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital captured by Reuters’ photographer Mohammed Salem has won the 2024 World Press Photo of the Year Award.
Inas Abu Maamar sat on the floor of the hospital morgue, cradling the body of five-year-old Saly, who was killed with her mother and sister when a missile hit their home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, on October 17, 2023.
Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem was at the Nasser Hospital and captured the very moment of Abu Maamar mourning her dead niece wrapped in white coffin.
Jury's reaction
World Press Photo jury while selecting the image for the award said it shows the horror and trauma the Palestinians are going through in Gaza.
“It is a really profoundly affecting image”, Jury Chairwoman, Fiona Shields, said.
“Once you’ve seen it, it’s kind of seared in your mind. It works as a kind of literal and metaphorical message really about the horror and futility of conflict”, she added.
“It’s an incredibly powerful argument for peace,” Shields said.
Reuters photographer Salem after the award said the moment his camera captured shows the situation in Gaza.
“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.
Palestine in World Focus
Gaza Strip and the occupied Palestinian territories are going through the worst phase in the history of Middle East ever since Oct 07, 2023 when Israel attacked the besieged enclave.
The Israeli occupation forces began their military campaign in Gaza after the Hamas and other Palestinian Resistance Groups, tired of the Zionist atrocities and settlers’ provocations, stormed the occupied Palestinian areas under the Israeli control in October, killing some 1,200 and taking hostage over 250.
The death toll in Gaza since Oct 07 is more than 33,000 – over 70% of them women and children. The Israeli murderous military offensive in Gaza, besides a huge majority in the world, has prompted the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to probe allegations of genocide against Israel and the UN General Assembly and UN Security Council calling for immediate ceasefire.
The Israeli brutality has also brought Palestine the focus of the world as never before. People across the world are eager to learn more about Palestine and the Israeli occupation. In November 2023, two months into the Israeli attack on Gaza, “The Palestine Laboratory” adjudged the winner of Australia’s biggest Journalism Award.
'The Palestine Laboratory' was also among the six shortlisted titles for the 2023 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing.
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