Source: Burhan Ozbilici/ AP
A photograph of the assassination of Russian Ambassador of Turkey, Andrei Karlov, by a Turkish policeman won the first prize in the 2017 World Press Photo Awards.
The photo taken on December 19 2016 at an art gallery in Ankara by Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici showed the gun-weilding policeman shouting, after shooting the ambassador.
“I think it is an incredibly hard-hitting news photograph, great spot news story. It wasn’t just a photograph, it was a spot news story and I think that Burhan was incredibly courageous and had extraordinary composure in being able to sort of calm himself down in the middle of the affray and take the commanding pictures that he took,” the Jury chair commented on the award-winning image.
The World Press Photo Awards started in 1995. More than 80,000 images have been submitted for the awards in 2017. This year, the jury awarded prizes in eight categories to 45 photographers from 25 countries.
Daniel Berehulak of The New York Times won first prize in the General News (Stories) category for ‘They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals’, which features the image of inmates watching as drug suspects are processed inside a police station in Manila, Philippines.
Laurent Van der Stockt Getty Reportage for Le Monde, won the General News (Singles) prize for the image featuring a scene during an Iraqi Special Operations Forces search of houses.
Here are some of the award-winning photographs: