Inside AFP
Topshots of the Week (17-23 February 2024)
A selection of some of the most striking photographs taken by AFP photojournalists from the 17th to the 23rd of February 2024.
Tourists enjoy the rare opportunity to walk in water as they visit Badwater Basin, the normally driest place in the US, in Death Valley National Park, Inyo County, California on February 19, 2024. Badwater Basin, an endorheic basin in Death Valley National Park, was flooded by Hurricane Hilary in August 2023 and recent rains in California. It is the lowest point in North America, at 282 feet (86 meters) below sea level.
© David SWANSON / AFP
A Palestinian girl eats a piece of bread as people check debris on February 22, 2024, following overnight Israeli air strikes in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, as battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas continue.
© Mohammed ABED / AFP
The moon is pictured in Cali, Colombia, on February 24, 2024.
© Joaquin SARMIENTO / AFP
Men cleanse their bodies in a river during the Sominsai Festival at Kokuseki-ji Temple in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture, Japan, on February 17, 2024. The "Sominsai" ritual, widely regarded as one of the strangest festivals in Japan and regularly draws thousands of tourists, became the latest example of this country's aging population crisis that has hit hard rural communities, where many residents have become elderly while young people flock to cities.
© Philip FONG / AFP
A young Iraqi girls who has reached the age of wearing a hijab, is clothed in the head covering worn by many Muslim women for the first time during a ceremony organised at the Basra International Stadium in Iraq's southern city of Basra on February 21, 2024.
© Hussein FALEH / AFP
A man holds a photo of Alexei Navaln at a rally on February 18, 2024 in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin, following the death of the Kremlin's most prominent critic Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison. Navalny's death after three years in detention and a poisoning which he blamed on the Kremlin deprives Russia's opposition of its figurehead at time of intense repression and Moscow's campaign in Ukraine.
© Odd ANDERSEN / AFP
This photograph taken from Cordon ski resort near Megeve on February 18, 2024 near Cordon ski resort near Megeve, shows a hot air balloon drifing over the Massif du Mont-Blanc mountains range in the French Alps in France.
© Olivier CHASSIGNOLE / AFP
A rickshaw drives past a wild elephant crossing a road in Habarana on February 20, 2024.
© Ishara S. KODIKARA / AFP