MAYA ALLERUZZO

Photojournalist

Alleruzzo is an American photojournalist covering news, daily life and feature stories in the Middle East for The Associated Press.
Siblings mimic the sound of sirens that alert incoming rocket and missile fire, while sitting inside an open concrete bomb shelter in Al-Zarnug, an unrecognized Bedouin community in the Negev Desert, southern Israel, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Photos of how Bedouins in Israel improvise shelters to survive missile threats
For Israel’s 300,000-strong Bedouin community, there are no shelters to protect them from incoming missiles, so they have to improvise: hiding in steel containers and vehicles buried under 10 feet (3 meters) of dirt and repurposing reconstruction debris in the hope of some protection.
 
The Gaboa family, Bedouins living in Al-Furaa village in southern Israel, gather around the makeshift bomb shelter they made from two gravel trucks buried in dirt to protect them from incoming Iranian fire, Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Israel’s Bedouin Arabs turn to DIY solutions for lack of bomb shelters
When the sirens wail in the southern Israeli desert to herald an incoming missile, Ahmad Abu Ganima’s family scrambles outside.
 
A boy rubs his eye after tear gas was fired by Israeli Police into the yard of the UNRWA Boys' School run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in the Shuafat Refugee Camp in east Jerusalem, Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Israel police fire tear gas into Palestinian schoolyard in Jerusalem
Israel has ordered six schools in East Jerusalem to close this week, throwing the educational future of 800 children of Palestinian refugees into turmoil.
 
A teddy bear is displayed in a textiles conservation lab during the inauguration of The Moshal Shoah Legacy Campus and The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Center, at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, Monday, July 8, 2024. Israel's national Holocaust museum opened a new conservation facility in Jerusalem, which will preserve, restore, and store the more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art in a vast new building, including five floors of underground storage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Israel’s Holocaust memorial opens a conservation facility to store artifacts, photos and more
Israel’s Holocaust museum is opening a conservation facility in Jerusalem that will preserve, restore and store its more than 45,000 artifacts and artworks.
 
Mujahid Abadi, 24, poses for a portrait at the Ibn Sina Specialized Hospital where he is recovering from gunshot wounds and burns in the West Bank city of Jenin, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. When the Palestinian man stepped outside to see if Israeli forces had entered his uncle's neighborhood, he was shot in the arm and the foot. That was only the start of his ordeal. Hours later, beaten and bloodied, he found himself strapped to the searing hood of an Israeli military jeep driving down a road. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
A Palestinian was shot, beaten and tied to an Israeli army jeep. The army says he posed no threat
When Mujahid Abadi stepped outside to see if Israeli forces had entered his neighborhood, he was shot in the arm and the foot, and that was only the start of his ordeal.
 
People gather in Manger Square, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity, traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Saturday, Dec. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Bethlehem rebounds from pandemic, lifting Christmas spirits
The biblical town of Bethlehem is marking what is shaping up to be a merry Christmas. Thousands of visitors have descended upon the traditional birthplace of Jesus as it rebounds from the coronavirus pandemic.
 
Israeli protesters look for inspiration in in Biden victory
Several thousand Israelis have attended the weekly demonstration against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, with some participants expressing hope that Joe Biden’s victory in the U.S. presidential race would signal trouble for the Israeli leader as well.
 
AP PHOTOS: Editors’ picks for 2018 from the Middle East
CAIRO (AP) — In 2018, Associated Press photographers in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan captured searing images from relentless armed conflicts, but they also found moments of levity and offered a glimpse into daily life in a constantly changing region.
 
Ten-year-old Akram Rasho Khalaf pauses as he talks about how he had been captured at the age of 7 and trained by Islamic State militants, at the Khabarto Camp for internally displaced people in Dahuk, Iraq, on Friday, April 14, 2017. His family's town of Khidir Sheikh Sipa, northern Iraq, was overrun by the militants in August 2014. Akram’s uncle says his nephew has been deeply affected by his time in captivity, suffering nightmares, anxiety, sleeplessness and bedwetting. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
Iraqi boys’ harrowing tale of captivity, training by IS
KABARTO CAMP, Iraq (AP) — They made the captive children, malnourished and weak from hunger, fight over a single tomato.
 
Islamic State tightens grip on captives held as sex slaves
Islamic State fighters are doubling down on efforts to keep Yazidis captive, trading them on encrypted apps and making a photo database to prevent escape.
 
Islamic State tightens grip on captives held as sex slaves
Islamic State fighters are doubling down on efforts to keep Yazidis captive, trading them on encrypted apps and making a photo database to prevent escape.
 
AP PHOTOS: Iraqi special forces share treasured possessions
AP PHOTOS: Good luck charms, religious mementos, family pictures _ Iraqi soldiers show the things they carry that keep them alive and fighting in battle against Islamic State group.
 
Iraq routed IS from Ramadi at a high cost: A city destroyed
Iraqi forces’ victory in retaking Ramadi was celebrated as a vindication of the U.S.-led coalition’s strategy against the Islamic State group, but the cost was the city itself.
 
Only on AP: Islamic State razing of Iraq monastery condemned
World leaders condemn the loss of the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, another victim of the Islamic State’s relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites.