The World Press Photo Contest announced on 10 February that a picture by Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda has been named as the World Press Photo of the Year 2011.

The photograph shows a woman holding a wounded relative in her arms, inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen on 15 October 2011. Aranda was working in Yemen on assignment for The New York Times.

A posting on the The New York Times "Lens" blog by Kerri MacDonald and David Furst, notes that the photograph is one of the first Aranda filed from Yemen, and quotes him as saying: "I got back to my place, and I saw the photo in the screen and I was like 'Wow'. The woman is not just crying. It was something more. You can feel that the woman is really strong".

"The photo is the result of a very human moment", said Juror Manoocher Deghati, "but it also reminds us of something important, that women played a crucial part in this revolution. It is easy to portray the aggressiveness of situations like these. This image shows the tenderness that can exist within all the aggression. The violence is still there, but it shows another side".

In addition to Aranda's photo, the jury awarded prizes in nine themed categories to 57 photographers of 24 nationalities from the following countries: Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the USA. A gallery of winning photographs is available here.

Each year, the contest draws tens of thousands of entries by professional press photographers, photojournalists and documentary photographers from around the world. This year a total of 5,247 photographers from 124 countries entered 101,254 pictures in the contest.

The annual World Press Photo Contest is recognized as the leading international contest for photojournalists. The organisation says the judging is conducted at the World Press Photo office, where all entries are presented anonymously to the jury for discussion and debate of their merits during a two-week period. Video interviews with jurors can be found here.

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Sources: World Press Photo, The New York Times Lens blog