2012 World Press Photo: Arab Spring portrait receives top prize

A portrait of a veiled woman cradling a wounded relative in her arms, taken in Yemen by Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda for The New York Times, won the top World Press Photo prize on Friday.

The photograph captured a moment in the conflict in Yemen, when demonstrators against outgoing president Ali Abdullah Saleh used a mosque in Sanaa as a field hospital to treat the wounded. But judges said it also spoke more broadly for the Arab Spring.

"The winning photo shows a poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event, an event that is still going on," Aidan Sullivan, chair of the jury, said of Aranda's photograph, which won World Press Photo of the Year 2011.

"We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East."

Reuters photographer Damir Sagolj won first prize in the Daily Life Singles category with his photograph of North Korea's founder, Kim Il-sung on a wall in Pyongyang.

(Reporting by Sara Webb; Editing by Myra MacDonald)