View the entire collection of winning images from the 56th World Press Photo Contest. The winners were selected from over 100,000 images submitted to the contest.
Israel launched a military offensive against targets in Hamas-ruled Gaza, on 14 November. Israeli authorities said that Operation Pillar of Defense was aimed at protecting citizens from the hundreds of missiles fired into Israel by militants in Gaza.
The Syrian commercial hub of Aleppo was the scene of some of the bloodiest clashes in the ongoing uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Both government and opposition forces considered control of Aleppo to be strategically important to their aims.
The bodies of two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and his elder brother Muhammad, almost four, are carried by their uncles to a mosque for their funeral, in Gaza City.
A man suspected of giving money to government informants is held at a school occupied by the dissident Free Syrian Army (FSA), in the northern city of Aleppo.
In July, the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) entered Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and commercial capital. Rebel-held neighborhoods, initially in southwest Aleppo and later throughout the city, became battlefields, as government forces attempted to regain control.