Week in Pictures: Syria salutes year of al-Assad fall, Sudan’s suffering

An Israeli soldier arrests a Palestinian man during a military operation in the town of Qalqilya, in the occupied West Bank, December 4, 2025 [Zain Jaafar/AFP]

Residents assemble, carrying Syrian flags, during celebrations in central Hama commemorating the one-year anniversary of a lightning offensive that ultimately led to the downfall of the country's longtime ruler. [Omar Haj Kaour/AFP]

A man traverses a mud-laden street carrying a hoe in Aceh Tamiang, Aceh province, following a devastating flash flood. Catastrophic floods and landslides have killed more than 900 people across Indonesia's Sumatra Island, according to the country's disaster management agency, with growing concerns that starvation could further increase the death toll. [YT Hariono/AFP]

Civil Defence personnel employ an excavator to search through rubble of a destroyed building in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, looking for victims' remains. On December 6, Qatar and Egypt, acting as guarantors of the Gaza ceasefire, urged the withdrawal of Israeli troops and called for an international stabilisation force to be deployed, describing these as essential next steps to fully implement the fragile agreement. [Eyad Baba/AFP]

People take part in a protest against compulsory military service in Berlin, Germany. [Christian Mang/Reuters]

Awadeya, a Sudanese displaced woman who was held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), carries a water container at a camp for displaced people who fled from al-Fasher to Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan. [Mohamed Jamal/Reuters]

Relatives of victims wait for the arrival of Pope Leo XIV for a silent prayer at the site of the 2020 Beirut port explosion, as part of his apostolic journey, in Beirut. [Andreas Splaro/AFP]

Members of the Rwandan security forces escort newly displaced people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo arriving in Bugarama, Rwanda, after escaping intense shelling in the neighboring Kamanyola region. Hundreds of civilians from eastern DR Congo crossed the border into Rwanda following heavy bombardment that occurred just one day after Kinshasa and Rwanda ratified a peace agreement. [AFP]

A woman pushes a cart while walking past a house destroyed by recent shelling in the town of Horlivka (Gorlovka) in the Donetsk region, a Russian-controlled area of Ukraine. Local Russian-installed authorities attributed the damage to a Ukrainian military strike during the ongoing Russia-Ukraine military conflict. [Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters]

Crowds gather in Nativity Square in Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, for a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. People converged near the Church of the Nativity to witness the illumination of the Christmas tree - the first such celebration since 2022. [Hazem Bader/AFP]