A striking portrait of nine-year-old Mahmoud Ajjour, a young Palestinian boy who lost both arms in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, has won a top honor in the 2025 World Press Photo Contest.
Mahmoud was injured in March 2024 as his family fled an Israeli assault. “As his family fled an Israeli assault, Mahmoud turned back to urge others onward. An explosion severed one of his arms and mutilated the other,” World Press Photo said in a statement. He was later evacuated to Doha, Qatar, where he is now undergoing treatment and learning to adapt.
After his injuries, Mahmoud has started using his feet to play games on his phone, write, and even open doors. Yet for many daily activities, like eating or dressing, he requires special assistance. “Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prosthetics and live his life as any other child,” the organization stated.
The photograph, taken by Samar Abu Elouf, a photojournalist from Gaza, captures Mahmoud’s quiet resilience in the wake of trauma. Abu Elouf, who was evacuated from Gaza in December 2023, now lives in the same apartment complex in Doha as Mahmoud and other wounded Gazans. Her documentation of these lives, often hidden from global view, has earned her acclaim and brought international attention to the plight of Gaza’s war-wounded.
“One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realization that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you?’” Elouf recalled in a statement released by World Press Photo. The photo was originally taken for The New York Times in June 2024.
The contest’s global jury chair Lucy Conticello praised the image as a clear standout: “This young boy’s life deserves to be understood, 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.”
World Press Photo Executive Director Joumana El Zein Khoury echoed the sentiment: “It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations. Looking at our archive, in the 70th year of World Press Photo, I am confronted by too many images like this one. I remain endlessly grateful for the photographers who, despite the personal risks and emotional costs, record these stories to give all of us the opportunity to understand, empathize, and be inspired to action.”
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has disproportionately affected children. According to UNRWA, by December 2024, Gaza had more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that while more than 7,000 patients had been evacuated by March 2025, over 11,000 others remained in the territory awaiting medical help.
