An image of Mahmoud Ajjour, 9, which was seriously injured in an Israeli strike, won the 2025 World Press Year Prize.
A Palestinian child who was seriously injured in an attack with unmanned Israeli planes last year, and was photographed in an image that won the photo prize of the year of the World Press of 2025, says he is his own since then since then.
In statements to Al Jazeera de Doha, Qatar, where he has a bone trial treatment, Mahmoud Ajjour, nine, recalled the moment when the bomb exploded, pointing to his house in March 2024.
At first, Ajjour, which comes from the old town of the city of Gaza, said he did not realize that he was injured.
“I thought I had simply fallen. But I found myself on the floor, exhausted and wondering what had happened,” he told Al Jazeera.
Actually, an arm “flew, and one flew and fell by my side,” Hey added.
Not yet, he had suffered serious injuries, wounds that mutilated his entire body, Ajjour said he looked around and saw his arms. Althehey looked familiar, his brain still couldn’t understand that they had removed their legs.
“My mother told me that I lost my arms,” Ajjour recalled. “I started crying. I was very sad and my mental state was very bad.”
His mental health deteriorated even more when, like many others in Gaza, he had to undergo surgery without anesthetics due to a serious lack of medical supplies. Through the war, Israeli forces have kept vital border crossings closed, avoiding the entry of very necessary medical supplies, as well as food and other help, including fuel.
“They did a surgery about me while I was awake,” Ajjour said, the shock still evident in his voice.
“I couldn’t bear the pain, I was shouting very strong. My voice filled the halls.”
‘Everything is difficult’
Ajjour is one of the thousands of children in Gaza who suffer injuries that change their lives due to the implacable indistriminated Israeli bombardment.
According to the United Nations Fund for the Nation, more than 10 children have lost one or both legs since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocide in progress in Gaza.
That is more than 1,000 children.
“Gaza now has the greatest number of amputates of children per capita anywhere in the world loser limbs and submit to surgeries sicurias even to anesthesia,” said UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, in December.
Ajjour is now learning to write, playing games on your phone and dressing with your feet, but you still need special assistance for most daily activities.
Now he yearns for the days when his arms were still intact.
Before the attack, Ajjour said he used to go to the market and buy vegetables and food from his mother.
“Now, everything is difficult, including feeding myself, helping myself to bathroom … but I do my best,” Hey said. “I administer my life like that. I work.”
Ajjour dreams with a future where he can return to Gaza and help reconstruct the devastated enclave.
Hello, hopes the world can “end the war against Gaza”.
“We want to live in our country. We do not want the Israelis to take it,” he said.
“People are dying there [in Gaza]. And my house was a bed of bombs. How could I live like this? “
Israel is in the Bosie territory and bombed so far has killed more than 51,000 Palestinians and wounded at least 116,505 others, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
He has also displaced most of its strong population of 2.3 million, devastated most of the Earth, damaged the basic infrastructure and dismantled its health system that already fights.