American Photography 40 Winners

Palestinian children seeking shelter at a school stopped their play to look up the moment Israeli jets sliced through the air overhead and a blast shook the neighborhood: one of the first Israeli responses to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

This boy covered in blood and dust was brought early morning into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, from the nearby Shati neighborhood that was hit by Israeli airstrikes.

Medics treating an invalid on the hospital floor, after failing to find him a bed in Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younes, Southern Gaza Strip.

Thousands of children have been killed in the war, including this child of the Al-Majaida family, during a funeral on Oct. 19 in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. After about 6 weeks of war, health officials in Gaza said that 5,000 Palestinian children had been killed since the Israeli assault began, and possibly more. But determining the precise number of children killed in Gaza — in the midst of a fierce bombing campaign, with hospitals collapsing, children missing, bodies buried under rubble and neighborhoods in ruins — is a Sisyphean task.