The pain of Palestinian civilian victims, photo of the year for World Press Photo

The Palestinian photojournalist Muhammad Salem has captured the award-winning image this Thursday by the World Press Photo like the photo of the year: A woman hugs a girl who has just lost her life in the Gaza Stripa “powerful and sad” reflection of the pain and loss suffered by Palestinian civilians who have lived with Israeli bombs since October.

The photograph does not show the face of either of the two people who appear in the image. The adult woman, whose face is hidden by her arm, wears a long blue outfit and a brown veil that covers her hair, while the body and head of the girl she hugs are wrapped in a white cloth, a sign of who is no longer alive.

In the photo appear Inas Abu Maamar, 36, and her niece Saly, a five-year-old girl who died along with her mother and sister when their house in Khan Younis was hit and destroyed by an Israeli missile.

Salem found Inas crouched on the floor, hugging the girl, in the Nasser Hospital morgue, where Gazans go to look for missing relatives.

Salem describes the photograph as a “powerful and sad moment that sums up the general feeling of what was happening” in Gaza.