The best press photos of the year

(ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

An image by the British photographer Tim Hetherington of a fatigued US soldier in Afghanistan has won top prize in the international World Press Photo awards.

The winning picture was chosen out of a record 80,500 entries submitted by 5,019 participants from 125 countries for the awards, which began in 1955. Judges praised the portrayal of "the exhaustion of a man – and the exhaustion of a nation". The jury chairman, Gary Knight, said: "We are all connected to this. It's a picture of a man at the end of a line."

The agency Getty Images won five awards, including for its photos of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Hetherington was one of 59 photographers from 23 countries whose work was honoured. An increasing proportion of the winning entries were from non-Western photographers.

Hetherington will be presented with his ward in Amsterdam on 27 April. His image was used in the magazine Vanity Fair.