The world never ceases to provoke us. These photos—gasping for air and light, grasping at belief and hope—resonate beyond their description for a leisurely flip or a deep read this week
Image: Shankar Prasad Nautiyal / Reuters
Priests pray at a makeshift shrine to Boukhnag for workers' well-being inside a collapsed portion of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi, in Uttarakhand, India, November 23, 2023. Locals set up the shrine at the mouth of the tunnel, saying the temple had been moved during construction, invoking the deity's wrath. Rescuers prepared for a long haul as the blades of the auger drilling machine broke under strain from obstacles in the latest attempt to clear an escape passage for the trapped workers.
Image: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
A file photo of a miner making his way through a claustrophobic, rat-hole-like tunnel, 300 ft below the surface, extracting coal in an unregulated, illegal mine near Lad Rymbai in Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya. ‘Rat-hole’ miners like these, expert at excavating small tunnels, were brought in to burrow through debris manually—after machines failed—to successfully rescue the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi on November 28, 2023.
Image: Ronen Zvulun / Reuters
An Israeli soldier secures a tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City amid the ongoing operation of the Israeli army against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip on November 22, 2023. The Israeli military published a video showing a 55-metre fortified tunnel with a blast-proof door under Gaza's biggest hospital, accusing Hamas of using the hospital as a cover for military use. Hamas has denied Israeli allegations. A subterranean network exists below the 88 square miles that make up Gaza City, where two million people live in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet.