An angry God outside Uttarkashi tunnel, a manhunt inside Gaza tunnels, and overcoming tunnels of the mind: Eye-catching photos of the 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.

Image: Lionel Bonaventure / AFP
A mural made by French painter and survivor of the extermination camp Miklos Bokor (1927-2019) evokes the Shoah in the Malodene chapel in Martel, France, on November 16, 2023. A Hebrew word for catastrophe, Shoah refers to the killing of nearly six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Speaking of his work, Bokor said, "Something happened in Auschwitz that lurks in society like a gap, a wound that does not heal. Returning from the dead, the one who has lived in his flesh and in his spirit, the experience of dehumanisation begins to paint the unspeakable."

Image: Mahmud Hams / AFP
Palestinians bury unidentified bodies in a mass grave in Khan Yunis cemetery in the southern Gaza Strip on November 22, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas. The remains, which bore only numbers, had come from the Indonesian and Al-Shifa hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, according to members of the committee at the burial site. A member said that 'all the cemeteries are full.'

Image: Anatolii Stepanov / AFP
Ukrainian servicemen rest in an underground shelter on the frontline near the town of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, on November 18, 2023, as they enter the second winter of war against Russia. In these heated shelters, soldiers find temporary respite from the freezing cold but fight the mice that gnaw at everything, including satellite cables and soldiers' clothes. The industrial town of Bakhmut has seen some of the heaviest fighting in Russia's nearly 22-month invasion.

Image: Jade Gao / AFP
Children receive a drip at a children's hospital in Beijing on November 23, 2023. The WHO has asked China for more data on a respiratory illness spreading in the north of the country, urging people to take steps to reduce the risk of infection. China has reported an increase in "influenza-like illness" since mid-October, triggering fears and memories of the covid pandemic. Attributing the current surge to a strain of mycoplasma that has developed high drug resistance, China has warned that other respiratory illnesses will likely hit the broader population hard during the coming first winter after Covid restrictions.

Image: Derek Lord / AFP
This frame grab taken from video footage on November 23, 2023, shows native long-haired rats trapped in a rubbish bin in the Queensland town of Normanton after a bumper wet season in inland Australia. These 'smelly' rats have steadily marched towards the coast after a bumper damp season in inland Australia. They spread themselves over hundreds of kilometres in their hunt for new crops to nibble on. "There's nothing you can do", a local was quoted as saying, "... nature caused it, and nature will clean it up."

Image: Derek Lord / AFP
Serbia's Novak Djokovic reacts during his round-robin match against Italy's Jannik Sinner on day 3 of the ATP Finals tennis tournament in Turin on November 14, 2023. Djokovic got his revenge five days after his Davis Cup loss to Sinner, as he lifted a historic seventh trophy at the ATP Finals, breaking the record of six that he previously shared with Roger Federer. However, Novak will have to live down another day of "ole Sinner" chants, clearly a crowd favourite.
Tiziana Fabi / AFP

Image: Rodger Bosch / AFP
An employee inspects a solar panel at Ener-G-Africa, where a 100 percent women-run workforce makes solar panels that power low-income households across Sub-Saharan Africa. With an R135 Million investment, the plant manufactures 20 W panels that sell for around R300 each, supplies customers and exports to other countries such as Malawi, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and several other African countries. It also offers solar panels and solar-powered energy sources like gas stoves, cooking stoves, inverters, and batteries made by the barrier-breaking women workforce.

Image: Sunil Ghosh/HT via Getty Images
Women perform rituals in the polluted waters of the Yamuna River at Kalindi Kunj on the occasion of Chhath Puja on November 19, 2023, in Noida, India. A ritual dedicated to the Sun, the God of energy, these devotees waded through a thick layer of toxic foam that engulfed the sacred river, even as the Delhi Jal Board resorted to sprinkling chemical defoamers ahead of the festival.

Image: Stringer / Reuters
Rohingya Muslims walk through waters after locals temporarily allow them to land in Ulee Madon beach, North Aceh, Indonesia, November 16, 2023. The refugees from the persecuted Myanmar minority arriving off the coast of Aceh province were not allowed to land their boats and were sent back to sea by angry locals. A 2020 investigation by AFP revealed a multimillion-dollar, constantly evolving people-smuggling operation, stretching from a massive refugee camp in Bangladesh to Indonesia and Malaysia, in which members of the stateless Rohingya community play a crucial role in trafficking their own people.

Image: KCNA VIA KNS / AFP
The audience applaud during a banquet attended by North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un to celebrate the launch of a reconnaissance satellite at the Mulan Pavilion in Pyongyang, North Korea, on November 24, 2023. Amidst accusations that it had received Russian help to put a military spy satellite into orbit successfully, North Korea said it would deploy new weapons and stronger armed forces to the border with the South.

Image: Matthew Lewis / ICC via Getty Images
Indian cricket captain Rohit Sharma huddles with his team during the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup India 2023 final between India and Australia at Narendra Modi Stadium on November 19, 2023, in Ahmedabad, India. India's brilliant form that led them to the final ended in a heartbreak loss even as media pundits warned against the crowds' militant nationalism and poor sporting spirit displayed at the stadium. When the boisterous crowd fell into a deafening silence, a quiet quote by Australian captain Pat Cummins came to the fore: "There's nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent."

Image: Wojtek Radwanski / AFP
The celebrated Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz's exhibition was in the Dessa auction house in Warsaw, Poland, before its auction on November 21, 2023. Born out of the trauma and helplessness of World War II, Abakanowicz's haunting artworks of headless figures in woven fibre and mask-like portraits pioneered a new category of art known as Abakans. The works have an urgent contemporary relevance amid today's conflicts.