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This photo dated December 6, 2011 shows Afghan Shia Muslim 12-year-old Tarana Akbari crying near dead and injured people after explosions during a religious ceremony at the Abul Fazel shrine in the centre of Kabul where Shia Muslims were marking the Day of Ashura. Photo by Massoud Hossaini of Agence France-Presse was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography - AFP

AFP’s Massoud Hossaini won the award for breaking news photography ‘for his heartbreaking image of a girl crying in fear after a suicide bomber’s attack at a crowded shrine in Kabul’, the committee announced.

“When I could stand up, I saw that everybody was around me on the ground, really bloody. I was really, really scared,” said the girl, whose name means “melody,” and whose age has been given as either 10 or 12.

Sig Gissler, the Pulitzer administrator, called the AFP picture ‘one single riveting photograph’, and ‘a picture you will long remember’.