The week in pictures

March 27 —  People enjoy cherry blossoms on Sunday in Tokyo. The Japanese have a long-held tradition of enjoying the blooming of cherry trees, which lasts only for about a week and marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere. 

March 27  — Resident Valentina Demura, 70, reacts next to the building where her apartment, destroyed during the Ukraine-Russia conflict, is located in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine.

March 27 — Actor Will Smith, right, hits comedian Chris Rock as Rock spoke on stage during the 94th Academy Awards in Hollywood, the US. Rock had joked that Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, could be in the next GI Jane movie, a reference to her very short hair. She has alopecia, a disease which causes hair loss. 

March 28 — Firefighters work to extinguish a fire at a warehouse after it was hit by Russian shelling in Kharkiv, Ukraine. More than half of the city's 1.4-million people have fled the city since Russia's invasion on February 24.

March 28 — A volunteer covers the monument of Cyril and Methodius with sand bags for protection in Kyiv on Monday as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues and the two sides prepare for the first face-to-face peace talks in more than two weeks.

March 29 — A motorcyclist rides between a burning roadblock during protests demanding that the government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry do more to address gang violence including constant kidnappings, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

March 30 — A fan wears a catastrophes T-shirt ahead of a state memorial service for the late Australian cricketer at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, on Wednesday. Tens of thousands gathered to pay tribute to one of the game's finest players, who died at the age of 52.

March 30 — Ukrainian refugee Ulyana Syniuk holds Olenka Syniuk as they visit medical workers at an Israeli field hospital in Mostyska, Ukraine, during Russia's invasion. In the two weeks since the field hospital was set up, they have seen 1,299 people. 

March 30 — Soldiers search men at a checkpoint in the Iberia neighbourhood after El Salvador’s Congress approved emergency powers that temporarily suspended some constitutional protections after the country recorded a sharp rise in killings attributed to criminal gangs, in San Salvador, El Salvador.

March 31 — A father and his daughter inspect a flooded street in Lismore, Australia. Evacuation orders have been issued for towns across the New South Wales Northern Rivers region, with flash flooding expected as heavy rainfall continues.

March 31 — Emergency service workers carry the bodies civilians killed by Russian shelling to be transferred to a mortuary, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in Irpin, Ukraine.

March 31 — Fifa president Gianni Infantino and Qatar Prime Minister Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz al-Thani share a moment at the international football governing body’s congress in Doha.

March 31 — A vendor arranges decorative lanterns ahead of the holy month of Ramadan in Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday. Volunteers are sprucing up the Al-Aqsa compound in the city to prepare Islam’s third-holiest site ahead of Ramadan’s expected start on Saturday.

March 31 — Demonstrators react after they set a fire to a bus parked at the top of the road to Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's residence during a protest against him as many parts of the crisis-hit country faced up to 13 hours without electricity due to a shortage of foreign currency to import fuel, in Colombo, Sri Lanka.