The image of a Palestinian cradling her niece's corpse wins the World Press Photo | The truth

The image that won the award shows Inas Abu Maamar, 36, sobbing while rocking the body wrapped in a Saly sheet in the health center's morgue. The World Press Photo Foundation, which awards the awards, highlights the importance of the dangers that journalists face in times of war. Nearly a hundred reporters and contract media workers have died covering the war between Israel and Hamas since the Palestinian militia attacked southern Israel on October 7 and Israel launched a bombing campaign in Gaza. “The work of press and documentary photographers around the world is often carried out at high risk,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of the Amsterdam-based organisation. No wonder, last year, the number of journalists killed in Gaza reached a record, a high price to show the world the horrors of war.

It is not the first time that Salem, 39, a Reuters photographer since 2003, has received an award of this nature. 14 years ago he was also recognized in the same contest.

The jury argues that Salem's winning image demonstrates “care and respect” in composition, while also posing a “metaphorical and literal vision of unimaginable loss.” “I felt like the image summed up in the broadest sense what was happening in the Gaza Strip,” Salem said when the photo was first published in November. “People were confused, they ran from one place to another eager to know the fate of her loved ones, and this woman caught my attention because she was holding the girl's body and refused to let her go,” the photojournalist noted.

It so happens that Salem's wife gave birth to a son a few days before taking the snapshot. The photograph is “deeply moving,” said Fiona Shields, a member of the jury and head of photography at Guardian News & Media.

The World Press Photo for Photo Report of the Year goes to South African photographer Lee-Ann Olwage for the story Valim-babena, for GEO, which is part of the author's long-term project on dementia. With this effort she has already won a regional World Press Photo in the individual photography category in 2023.

Paul Rakotozandriny, 'Dada Paul', 91, has been living with dementia for 11 years and is caring for his daughter Fara Rafaraniriana. No one knew that Dada Paul was sick. His ten children assumed that he had “gone crazy” and attributed the symptoms to excessive alcohol consumption. Only her daughter Fara noticed something different when her father, a retired chauffeur, was unable to return home after picking her up from work.

The Venezuelan Alejandro Cegarra, who has investigated migrations and denounced human rights violations in his country and Mexico, where he currently resides, is awarded the Long-Term Project Award with the image 'The Two Walls', for 'The New York Times'/Bllomberg. Cegarra began this project in 2018. His work documents the situation of displaced communities with respect and sensitivity. The application by the United States of deportation policies, sometimes under the pretext of stopping the spread of Covid, criminalized attempts to cross the border. This left thousands of people stranded in Mexican border cities. These areas, often under the control of corrupt authorities and drug cartels, force migrants and asylum seekers to wait indefinitely in makeshift camps where they are exposed to violence and precariousness.

The World Press Photo Open Format Award goes to Ukrainian photographer Julia Kochetova for 'War is Personal', an initiative that combines documentary photojournalism, poetry, illustration and music. as if it were a personal diary. The project shows how war is experienced on a daily basis.