AFP s Blent Kili? receives two awards at the World press Photo 05

AFP's B lent Kili receives two awards at the World Press Photo 2015 AFP photojournalist B lent Kili received first and third prizes in the category Spot News Single at the annual World Press Photo Awards.

12 Feb 2015

B lent Kili won first prize in the Spot News Single for the image of a young woman wounded during clashes between demonstrators and security forces at the funeral in Istanbul on 12 March 2014 of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan who died from injuries suffered during a protest.

Kili also won third prize in the same category for the stunning image of a coalition airstrike against Islamic State group militants on Tilsehir hill west of the Syrian border town of Kobane on 23 October 2014.

Hearing the news, he said: I am very happy of course. It's the biggest photo contest in the world. It has been a dream for the last ten years and it has finally happened.

B lent Kili , a Turkish photographer born in 1979, began his career as a journalist for the local press and in 2003 became a photographer, joining AFP as a stringer two years later.

He is currently the photo manager for Turkey and has carried out several foreign assignments including in Ukraine and Syria.

The two awards won by B lent at the World Press Photo crown an exceptional year of reporting which has already seen him win several prizes, said AFP chairman Emmanuel Hoog.

In 2014 B lent Kili won prizes at the Bayeux-Calvados War Correspondents awards, the North American Press Photographers Association competition and the China International Press Photo contest. Time Magazine and the Guardian also chose him as their agency photographer of the year.

The agency has a network of more than 500 photographers, who regularly win top international photo prizes. It transmits more than 3,000 images a day. The agency's photo platform, ImageForum, boasts some 23 million images from AFP and its 40 partners. The international photo service was created in 1985 and has increased its production seven-fold since the year 2000.

About AFP

AFP is a global news agency delivering fast, accurate, in-depth coverage of the events shaping our world from conflicts to politics, sports, entertainment and the latest breakthroughs in health, science and technology. With 2,260 staff spread across almost every country, AFP covers the world 24 hours a day in six languages. AFP delivers the news in video, text, photos, multimedia and graphics to a wide range of customers including newspapers and magazines, radio and TV channels, web sites and portals, mobile operators, corporate clients as well as public institutions.

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