The week in pictures

April 16 — Residents watch as fire sweeps through Joe Slovo  informal settlement’s tightly packed shacks, along the N2 in Langa near Cape Town. Up to 260 homes were destroyed and 700 residents displaced, according to city authorities.

April 18 — Cele Sithole and Sphe Khwela remove a TV set from a damaged house in Mpola, Pinetown, in the hope that it may still work. The Durban area is still reeling from the devastation caused by the torrential rain and flooding.

April 18 — Firefighters battle a blaze after a civilian building was hit by a Russian missile in Lviv, Ukraine. At least six people were killed and eight wounded in missile strikes in different areas of the city, according to the governor.

April 18 — US President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden greet crowds at the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House in Washington, DC, the US.

April 19 — Local resident Tamara, 71, cries in front of an apartment building destroyed during the Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine.

April 19 — A woman walks past official campaign posters of French presidential election candidates Marine le Pen, leader of French far-right National Rally, and French President Emmanuel Macron, candidate for re-election, in Paris, France.

April 19 — A bucket wheel excavator loads train wagons with coal at Borodinsky opencast colliery, owned by the Siberian Coal Energy Company, near the Siberian town of Borodino east of Krasnoyarsk.

April 19 — Flames and smoke rise during Israeli airstrikes amid a flare-up of Israel-Palestinian violence, in the southern Gaza Strip. The bombing raids over three nights were in response to a rocket attack.

April 20 —  A man looks at a shirt belonging to a missing girl as he and other residents sift through rubble after heavy rains caused devastating floods in Ntuzuma and elsewhere in Durban, and parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.

April 20 — A shop owner picks an item for a customer by candlelight during power outages in Soweto caused by breakdowns at Eskom’s ageing coal-fired plants.

April 20 — Israeli security forces scuffle with right-wing protesters during a rally in Jerusalem. Police blocked hundreds of Israeli nationalists from marching around predominantly Palestinian areas and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, according to reports. 

April 20 — African refugees and asylum seekers sit near their belongings during an open-ended sit-in asking for evacuation from Tunisia, outside the headquarters of UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in Tunis.

April 21 — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrives at the San Damaso courtyard to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican. Orban met the Pope as the war in Ukraine and the millions of refugees cast a shadow over a leader with ties to Russia.

April 21 — Animal rights activists from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) in dinosaur costumes hold placards urging people to go vegan, in Manila, Philippines, ahead of Earth Day on April 22.

April 21 — A person in a protective suit squeezes through a locked gate of a residential compound, after a Covid-19 outbreak in Shanghai and strict controls to prevent spreading that have angered some residents. About two-thirds of the city’s 25-million residents remain under a lockdown. The Chinese financial hub reported 15,861 new local asymptomatic coronavirus cases on Thursday and 2,634 symptomatic cases. There was one death and 441 new cases outside quarantined zones. 

April 21 — French President Emmanuel Macron, candidate for re-election in the 2022 French presidential election, greets supporters during a visit in Saint-Denis as he campaigns in Seine-Saint-Denis ahead of the second round of the presidential election in France on Sunday.