“Bombardment was easier.” War forced this photojournalist to flee. She still captured one of the most striking Gaza images

When the Israel-Gaza conflict forced photojournalist Samar Abu Elouf to flee, she felt that her role covering the war as a photojournalist was over. Yet, working from Doha, Qatar, thousands of kilometers away, the photographer has taken what is quickly becoming one of the most iconic images of the war. Her image of a nine-year-old boy, who lost both of his arms in an airstrike, has been recognized as the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year. The judges announced the award on April 17.

In Elouf’s image of Mahmoud Ajjour, sunlight highlights the melancholy look on the boy’s face, encouraging the viewer to look deeper, into the shadows where the boy’s tank top reveals his missing arms. The child was injured in an air strike in March of 2024 when he turned back to urge his fleeing family forward.

Ajjour managed to flee to Doha, where he lived in the same apartment complex as Elouf. The photojournalist had evacuated Gaza the year before. Elouf, an independent photographer who works with The New York Times, found herself living in the same apartment complex as many families that had fled the same area. Photographing the wounded refugees has allowed Elouf to continue to tell the story of the conflict.

“Somehow, life under bombardment was easier and less heavy for me than being so far away from my parents and my family,” Elouf said. “It wasn’t an easy decision for me to leave Gaza. It felt like my role as a photojournalist was over. But I knew I had to keep going because the war is still ongoing. It’s not over, it’s been a year and a half, if not more. And from here I started searching. I wanted to find something to do for those seeking refuge, and I wanted to tell their story.”

Both the child in the photograph and the photographer behind the camera humanize the startling statistics from the conflict. Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita, according to the United Nations. The Israel-Gaza war has killed more journalists in one year than any other conflict since the Committee to Protect Journalists started tracking those numbers.

Ajjour, who heartbreakingly asked his mother ‘How am I going to hug you now?’, is now learning to write and open doors with his feet. He dreams of getting prosthetics.

“This young boy's life deserves to be understood,” said Lucy Conticello, a global jury chair for the contest and the Director of Photography for M, “and this picture does what great photojournalism can do: provide a layered entry point into a complex story, and the incentive to prolong one's encounter with that story. In my opinion, this image by Samar Abu Elouf was a clear winner from the start.”

Elouf’s image was selected as the overall World Press Photo of the Year from the 42 category winners announced last month. Her image was also recognized along with two finalists, John Moore and Musuk Nolte. Conticella said that conflict, migration, and climate change were overarching themes of the winning images, all depicting stories of resilience, family, and community.

Moore is a World Press Photo finalist for his work Night Crossing, taken on assignment for Getty Images. The image shows Chinese migrants trying to get warm after a rainy crossing at the US-Mexico border.

Nolte, a photographer for Panos Pictures and Bertha Foundation, won a finalist spot for the image entitled Droughts in the Amazon. The photograph tells the story of the drought by showing a young man, who must walk two kilometers to deliver food to his mother, staring across a dry, empty landscape.

The three top images, along with the previously announced World Press Photo honors, will be on display in a traveling photo exhibition that will reach more than 60 cities.