Turkish photographer runner-up for top award

AMSTERDAM

Turkish photographer Emin Özmen has won the second prize in the Spot News Single category of the World Press Photo Contest with a picture of Syrian opposition fighters torturing an informant in Aleppo. REUTERS/Emin Ozmen/World Press Photo/Handout

The prize-winning entries of the World Press Photo Contest 2013, the world’s largest annual press photography contest, were announced today.

Turkish photographer Emin Özmen has won the second prize of the World Press Photo Contest of the World Press Photo Contest 2013 with this picture of Syrian opposition fighters interrogating and torturing an informant in Aleppo taken on July 31, 2012.

A photo of Gazans taking two children and their father killed in an Israeli air strike for burial has won the 2013 World Press Photo award for Swedish photographer Paul Hansen.

The staff shooter for the Dagens Nyheter daily took the image of the funeral procession carrying two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her three-year-old brother Muhammad down an alley in Gaza City on November 20, 2012.

“The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children,” said Mayu Mohanna, jury member from Peru. “It’s a picture I will not forget.” The children’s father Fouad was also killed in the air strike and their mother was put in intensive care.

Palestinian Adel Hana has won the third prize in the Spot News Single category with his photo showing Palestinian gunmen ride motorcycles dragging the body of a man who was killed earlier as a suspected collaborator with Israel.

This year’s World Press Photo competition saw judges sift through 103,481 photographs submitted by 5,666 photographers of 124 nationalities.

Top winner Hansen will be awarded a cash prize of 10,000 euros and a camera during a ceremony in Amsterdam in April.