A haunting portrait of a nine-year-old Palestinian boy who lost both arms during an Israeli attack on Gaza City won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year Award Thursday. The picture, by Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times, depicts Mahmoud Ajjour, evacuated to Doha after an explosion severed one arm and mutilated the other last year.
The photographer is also from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023. She now portrays badly wounded Palestinians based in Doha. “One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realisation that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you’?” said Elouf.
The jury praised the photo’s “strong composition and attention to light” and its thought-provoking subject-matter, especially questions raised over Mahmoud’s future. “This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly. It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, World Press Photo executive director.
The boy is now learning to play games on his phone, write and open doors with his feet, the jury said. “Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prosthetics and live his life as any other child,” said the World Press Photo organisers in a statement.
The jury also selected two photos for the runner-up prize. The first, entitled Droughts in the Amazon by Musuk Nolte for Panos Pictures and the Bertha Foundation, shows a man on a dried-up river bed in the Amazon carrying supplies to a village once accessible by boat. The second, Night Crossing by John Moore shooting for Getty Images, depicts Chinese migrants huddling near a fire during a cold rainshower after crossing the US–Mexico border.
The jury sifted through 59,320 photographs from 3,778 photojournalists to select 42 prize-winning shots from around the world.
