Swedish photographer bags World Press Photo award

The Award winning photo shows two Palestinian children killed in an Israeli missile strike being carried to their funeral. Photo: AP/Paul Hansen

Swedish photographer Paul Hansen won the 2012 World Press Photo award on Friday, for newspaper Dagens Nyheter - with a picture of two Palestinian children killed in an Israeli missile strike being carried to their funeral.
“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 jury member Mayu Mohanna of Peru.
World Press Photo, one of photojournalism's most prestigious contests, issued awards in nine categories to 54 photographers of 32 nationalities.
Hansen's November 20 shot won top prize in both the spot news single photograph category and the overall competition. “This prize is the highest honour you can get in the profession,” Hansen told The Associated Press. “I'm very happy, but also very sad. The family lost two children and the mother is unconscious in a hospital.”
Hansen will receive a 10,000-Euro prize at ceremonies and the opening of the year's exhibition April 25-27 in Amsterdam.
Violence in the Middle East, and its effect upon civilians, was the dominant theme in the hard news categories.
The Associated Press won eight awards in all, including top prizes for a spot news series for Bernat Armangue of Spain for photos he took in Gaza during November; and for Rodrigo Abd of Argentina for general news single photograph, with a picture of a woman with a bloodstained face weeping in Idib, Syria, on March 10.
In other categories, Wei Seng Chen of Malaysia won in the sports singles category with a shot of what might be considered a local "extreme sport": a man clutching the tails of two bulls as they pull him through a watery rice field in Batu Sangkar, Indonesia. The competition also includes portrait series, scenes from everyday life, and nature photography, among others.
The contest drew entries from professional press photographers, photojournalists and documentary photographers across the world. In all, 103,481 images were submitted by 5,666 photographers from 124 countries. The photos were submitted anonymously to a panel of 19 jury members, and judged in multiple rounds.
The winners were all "stellar examples of first-rate photojournalism," said chairman of the jury panel, AP Director of Photography Santiago Lyon.