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 October 17, 2023, at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis where families were searching for relatives killed during the Israeli bombing of the Palestinian enclave.
Salem’s winning image shows Inas Abu Maamar, 36, sobbing while holding her niece Saly’s sheet-clad body in the hospital morgue. Salem, a Palestinian aged 39, has worked for Reuters since 2003.
The jury said Salem’s 2024 winning image was “composed with care and respect, offering at once a metaphorical and literal glimpse into an unimaginable loss”. “I felt the picture sums up the broader sense of what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” Salem said.
