Photos Of The Week #52
Aceh residents react during a mass prayer at the Baiturrahman mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, to commemorate the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, which claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people. (epa/Adi Weda)
A woman touches a crucifix at the site where the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared in an apparition in Medjugorje, south of Sarajevo, Bosnia. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic)
A man wearing a Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost) costume sleeps in a bus before a Christmas parade in the center of Minsk, Belarus, on December 25. (epa/Tatyana Zenkovich)
The mountainous terrain of eastern Afghanistan is seen through the window of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter near Bagram Air Field in Parwan Province. (Reuters/Lucas Jackson)
Female fighters with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) stand near the border between Syria and Iraq, close to the Iraqi town of Snoun. (Reuters)
Men decorate a tree with lights ahead of Christmas in a Christian slum in Islamabad, Pakistan. (Reuters/Faisal Mahmood)
A girl from the minority Yazidi sect, many of whom have fled Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, sits beside a box of food aid on Mount Sinjar. (Reuters)
Afghan children play football in a field in a village on the outskirts of Mazar-e Sharif. (AFP/Farshad Usyan)
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at a meeting for heads of state from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at the Kremlin in Moscow on December 23. (TASS/Ilya Pitalev)
A child plays in front of illuminated stars set up in Gorky Park in Moscow as preparation for the holiday season. (epa/Yury Kochetkov)
A child holds on to a fence at his house during a flood at the Kampung Melayu residential area in Jakarta on December 23. (Reuters/Beawiharta)
A man walks past a huge holiday Christmas and New Year's poster in Minsk. (AFP/Sergei Gapon)
People from the minority Yazidi sect are seen at Mount Sinjar, in the town of Sinjar, on December 21. Iraqi Kurdish fighters swept across the northern side of Sinjar mountain after breaking through to free hundreds of Yazidis trapped there for months by Islamic State fighters. (Reuters/Ari Jalal)
A man walks near the recently damaged Savur Mogila monument to Red Army soldiers fallen during World War II near the eastern Ukrainian city of Snizhnee. The memorial complex, built in 1963 to commemorate a 1943 World War II Soviet battle, was reduced to rubble after battles between Ukrainian forces and separatist soldiers. (AFP/Vasily Maximov)
A street vendor shows a T-shirt with a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a Christmas market in St. Petersburg. (epa/Anatoly Maltsev)
An Afghan girl walks through the old part of the city in Herat. (epa/Jalil Rezayee)
Pakistani minority Christian children dressed as Santa Claus pose in Karachi during a Christmas peace rally in solidarity of the victims of the Peshawar school massacre. (AFP/Rizwan Tabassum)
The grandmother (right) and mother of Muhammad Ali Khan, a student who was killed during an attack by Taliban gunmen on an army-run school in Peshawar, react during a visit by Imran Khan (left), chairman of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) political party. (Reuters/Fayaz Aziz)
Pakistani security officials guard a central prison in Karachi after security was increased to high alert after the government lifted a six-year moratorium on executions. (epa/Shahzaib Akber)
A Russian Communist Party supporter takes part in a protest rally called "March of the Empty Pots" against the policies of the Russian government in front of the parliament building in Moscow. (TASS/Zurab Dzhavakhadze)
People from the minority Yazidi sect pass a destroyed military vehicle belonging to Islamic State militants at Mount Sinjar, in the town of Sinjar, Iraq. (Reuters/Ari Jalal)
A Romanian ranger salutes after laying a wreath to the victims of the 1989 revolution during a commemoration ceremony held in front of Romanian National Radio building in central Bucharest. (epa/Robert Ghement)