War in Gaza: The story behind the World Press Photo 2024 “Image of the Year”

“It was a powerful and sad moment.”

This is how Palestinian photographer Mohammed Salem described the moment he captured which has been selected as World Press Photo 2024 “Image of the Year”The world’s leading journalistic photography competition.

The World Press Photo organization this Thursday announced the award-winning snapshots, which were selected from a list of more than 61,000 works by nearly 4,000 photographers from 130 countries.

Salem took photo Last year on October 17Just a week after the Hamas attack on Israeli territory that sparked the current war in Gaza.

At the time, Israel was carrying out its first air strikes in retaliation for Hamas incursions.

It was in the city of jan euniceIn the south of the Strip, where many families fled the bombing of Gaza City.

At the beginning of the war, Israel ordered residents of Gaza City to move south for safety.

However, in mid-October they bombed some cities in the south, including Khan Yunis.

A Reuters agency photographer visited the morgue of Nasser Hospital, where Palestinians had come to search for their relatives missing during the Israeli attack.

there he found inas abu mamar Crying, heartbroken, holding a small, lifeless body wrapped in a sheet in her arms.

it was about His 5-year-old niece, named SallyAs reported by Reuters.

The house where Sally lived with her parents in Khan Yunis was attacked by Israeli artillery, and Inas immediately went to check on the condition of her relatives.

That’s when he realized that the worst had happened.

Sally, her sister and mother as well as two other family members were killed in the attack.

inas After this he went to the morgueWhere he found the body of his niece.

Speaking to Reuters, he said, “When I saw the girl I lost consciousness, I took her in my arms.”

She also said that the doctor had asked her to return the body to the mortuary, “but I told them to leave it with me.”

Reuters explains it Sally was Inas’ favorite nieceWhose cell phone is full of pictures and videos of the girl.

She would pass by her grandmother’s house every day when she went to kindergarten and ask her aunt to take pictures of her with her cell phone.

Sally had a 4-year-old brother, Ahmed, who survived the attack because he was away from home when it happened.

After being orphaned, he now lives with his aunt Inas.

In the message below you can see one of the photos that Inas took of his deceased niece.

According to the official World Press Photo website, the photo’s author described it as a “powerful and tragic moment that summarizes the broader meaning of what was happening in the Gaza Strip”.

He admitted that this was a particularly sensitive moment for him. His wife had given birth just a few days ago,

Mohammed Salem, born 1985, is a Palestinian photojournalist based in the Gaza Strip.

He earned a graduate degree in media from the University of Gaza and has worked with Reuters since 2003 documenting the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, as well as other events in the region.

Nearly 34,000 people have died in Gaza as a result of the Israeli offensive, after more than seven months of war, according to the Hamas-controlled strip’s health ministry.

The October 7 attack by the organization – which is considered terrorist by the US and EU – sparked the war, which left nearly 1,200 people dead and more than 250 abducted.

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