ZOHRA BENSEMRA, ALGERIA
IRAQ: FREED, BUT NOT FREE OF FEAR
Mosul, Iraq, summer of 2017. The “Islamic State” has been driven from the second largest city in Iraq – three years after they had captured it. The fighting during the months it took to recapture the city, in whose Great Mosque the leader of ISIS had declared his caliphate, has left the city in ruins. The population: turned into hostages, caught between the fronts and repeatedly prevented from fleeing the city. Then this moment: a little barefoot girl who had just arrived holding the hand of a young man stands in front of an Iraqi special forces checkpoint in Kokjali. A soldier brandishing his weapon next to this shy little girl: one of the absurd situations many of the city’s two million inhabitants had to live through, including the children. And still have to.

© Zohra Bensemra, Algeria (Thomson-Reuters)
Photographer Zohra Bensemra, born in Algiers in 1968, captured the children’s fear and vulnerability in this and other photographs. She is one of those photojournalists who go to where it must even hurt the viewer to imagine such a life: She documented the Algerian civil war, has been to Afghanistan and Somalia, Sudan and Libya. While working for Reuters, she also traveled from Mosul to the Syrian city of Raqqa, the next location in the battle to oust ISIS, to the next place where children also die.
Curriculum Vitae: Zohra Bensemra, Algeria (Thomson Reuters)

© Zohra Bensemra