Before his tenth birthday, Mahmoud Ajjour lost his arms after an Israeli explosion struck one of his hands and caused serious injuries to the other. Ajjour fled his house in Gaza with relatives last March when he was beaten; He told his family to continue without him.
Months later, Gazan journalist Samar Abu Elouf Ajjour photographed in Qatar, where he fled for medical treatment. One of Eluof’s portraits of the nine -year -old was recognized with the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year Award, as announced today, April 17.
While assignment for a New York Times Story about Gazans who receive medical treatment in Qatar, partially photographed Elouf Ajjour through a jet of sunlight that reveals both the unyielding gaze of the child and the pure destruction of his injuries. The autodidactic photojournalist left Gaza in December 2023 and lives in the same apartment complex as Ajjour.
The striking photo gives a glimpse into the reality with which thousands of other children are confronted in Gaza, who is home to the home of the highest number of children’s amputes all over the worldAccording to the Children’s Fund of the United Nations (Unicef).
“This is a calm photo that speaks loudly,” said Joumana El Zein Khourry, executive director of the World Press Photo Foundation, in a statement. “It tells the story of one boy, but also of a breeder who will have for generations of impact.”
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty InternationalL and a Special committee of the UNcharacterize Israel’s attacks on Gaza as genocide. According to the committee to protect journalists, More members of the media Since the attacks of Israel on Gaza started in October 2023 than in any other conflict that the organization has documented.
“The life of this young boy deserves to be understood, and this photo does what great photo journalism can do: offer a layered access point in a complex story and the incentive to extend someone’s meeting with that story,” said World Press Photo Global Jury Conticello in a press release.
Samar Abu Elouf is the second Palestinian photojournalist who has wins the top award of the World Press Photo since October 2023. Last April the prize went to Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem, who recorded a Gazan woman who held the small body bag that held the body of her five-year-old niece.
This year, more than 59,000 images were made by photographers from 141 countries taken into account for the coveted annual price. The two second place for the world photo of the year recorded Chinese immigrants who cross the border of the United States-Mexico and a man who is respectively in a river bed affected by drought in the Amazon. The regional winners of the competition include fragments of life in the midst of political unrest: A Groom in Sudan On a mobile phone, a portrait From a transman in the Netherlands, scars from top operations and photos of a Ukrainian child suffer from panic attacks.
Elouf receives a cash prize of € 10,000 (~ $ 11,300) and a Fujifilm camera. The photo will tour in a worldwide exhibition with other regional winners and finalists in North America, South America, Europe and Australia.
