Haunting refugee crisis image wins World Press Photo 2015 – see the pictures

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A "haunting" image of refugees trying to cross the border between Serbia and Hungary has won the 59th annual World Press Photo Contest.

The winning picture, by Australian freelance photographer Warren Richardson, was taken at night on 28 August last year and shows a man passing a baby through a barbed wire fence.

Richardson, who is currently based in Budapest, said he camped with the refugees for five days and took the shot as people tried to cross into Hungary before a secure fence on the border was completed.

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"A group of about 200 people arrived and they moved under the trees along the fence line," he said. "They sent women and children, then fathers and elderly men first. I must have been with this crew for about five hours and we played cat and mouse with the police the whole night.

"I was exhausted by the time I took the picture. It was around three o'clock in the morning and you can't use a flash while the police are trying to find these people because I would just give them away. So I had to use the moonlight alone."

Competition judge Huang Wen, the director of new media development at Xinhua News Agency, described the photo as a "haunting" image.

"It's subtle and shows the emotion and the real feeling from the deep heart of a father just trying to hand over his baby to the world he was longing to be in. This is really something," he said.

Nearly 83,000 photographs from around the world were submitted to the contest. The jury awarded prizes in eight categories to 41 photographers in total, a collection of which can be viewed above. Richardson won 10,000 euros.