From Qusra to Dakar: the Week in Twenty Photographs

Ten photographs can carry a week. This one produced twenty, and most of them hurt.

The gallery, drawn from wire agencies and freelance photographers across four continents, opens in the West Bank village of Qusra. Léo Corrêa's image for AP shows a member of Israeli security forces aiming his weapon at Palestinians during an attack by settlers. The political context matters: Israel's president has chosen Gadi Eisenkot, Benjamin Netanyahu's strongest rival, to try to form a new government. Eisenkot has vowed to crack down on extremist West Bank settlers who have attacked Palestinians with impunity, decrying recent incidents as 'Jewish terror' abetted by Netanyahu's government.

What do the images from Gaza show?

Ali Jadallah's photograph for Anadolu via Getty Images captures a boy walking past flooded tents and wrecked cars after heavy rainfall. Aid agencies say tens of thousands of Palestinians were left in waterlogged and damaged tents after deadly weekend storms, while 150,000 new shelters wait outside Gaza for Israeli approval to enter.

Jehad Alshrafi's AP frame shows Palestinians walking through a camp for displaced people amid buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza City. Nearby, in cultural news with real reach: NAZA, the award-winning documentary detailing Israel's mass killing of civilians in Gaza, has been seen by more than 1.5 million people since its cinema release across the world last month.

Eyad Baba's image for AFP via Getty Images documents hospital staff inspecting damage inside Nasser hospital after an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis. The hospital director said the strike killed six people, including a surgeon and a disabled man, and wounded 28 others. Against that backdrop, Omar Al-Qattaa photographed a Palestinian bride preparing for a mass wedding organised by Operation Chivalrous Knight, a humanitarian relief campaign, in Gaza.

Why is Novaya Gazeta closing?

Ramil Sitdikov's Reuters photograph may be the week's most quietly devastating: Novaya Gazeta staff hold portraits of slain journalists at their last editorial meeting in Moscow. On 29 October the paper learned two things — it faced eviction from its newsroom, and banks would stop processing readers' donations, its only legal income. Insiders warned Novaya could be declared an extremist organisation, meaning any employee could be jailed: a journalist, an editor, an accountant or a cleaner.

Gleb Garanich's Reuters image shows a medical worker evacuating a patient from a Kyiv hospital damaged in a Russian jet drone strike near several western embassies. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said speed restrictions on SpaceX's Starshield system had made it harder for Ukraine to shoot down enemy drones.

What else made the frame?

Jakub Porzycki photographed a woman at the site of the Kraków market square shooting, which killed six people and wounded 16 in what Poland's defence minister called an 'act of terror'. Alejandro Martinez Velez's Reuters image shows Madrid's protest march during Spain's first general strike in 14 years, with millions demanding affordable housing before an election that could bring the far right to power. Elke Scholiers captured Paris police clashing with demonstrators at Place de la Nation over economic concerns.

In Brooklyn, Charly Triballeau's AFP photograph shows rescuers searching rubble a day after a building collapse that killed eight — six found in the wreckage, two later from injuries, including two children and two construction workers from a nearby site. Julia Demaree Nikhinson's AP image follows Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed and his wife Sarah Jukaku riding the senate subway to the Hart building.

Majid Asgaripour photographed a woman volunteer on a zipwire at a citizen military training centre at Azadi Square in Tehran, where Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said it destroyed a US early-warning radar in Bahrain — its first direct attack on US military installations in months, in response to a US airstrike on a communications tower in Sirik overlooking the strait of Hormuz.

Simone Risoluti's Vatican Media frame shows Pope Leo XIV and Peru's president, Keiko Fujimori, watching a dancer at the Grand National Theatre of Peru in Lima, where tens of thousands lined the streets on Wednesday. Edmar Barros's AP image of a fisherman inspecting dead fish along Lake Manaquiri, an Amazon tributary, pairs uneasily with Tolga Akmen's photograph of Lula greeted by an indigenous delegate at the Cop31 UN climate conference in Antalya — where, an analysis found, more than 100 fossil-fuel-linked corporations and industry groups sent delegations.

François Nel's Getty image closes the set on day nine of the Dakar 2026 Summer Youth Olympic Games: Japan's Yume Minamino on the balance beam during the artistic gymnastics women's team final. A week of wreckage, and one gymnast holding her line.