Week in pictures: 16-22 December 2023 - BBC News

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MANUEL SILVESTRI/REUTERS

People dressed as Santa Claus take part in a Christmas regatta along the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy.

KRISTIN ELISABET GUNNARSDOTTIR/AFP

Local residents watch as a volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula in south-west Iceland erupts, following weeks of intense earthquake activity.

STR/AFP

People walk on a street buried beneath snow in Yantai, in China's eastern Shandong province. Temperatures in cities across northern China have hit record lows, with authorities issuing an alert for extreme cold across broad swathes of the country.

Jorge Nunez/ZUMA Press

Hot air balloons take off at dawn at the Pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico.

JOHN WESSELS/AFP

A voter marks her ballot at a polling station in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as voting in the general election continued late into the night on Wednesday. Millions of Congolese headed to the polls this week, with President Felix Tshisekedi facing 18 candidates as he seeks a second term.

TOBY MELVILLE/REUTERS

A reveller celebrates the Winter Solstice at Stonehenge near Amesbury, England, marking the end of the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

HANNAH MCKAY/REUTERS

Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez and Brentford forward Neal Maupay clash in a bad-tempered football match in west London, with both players trying to have the other sent off.

PHILIP FONG/AFP

People take pictures in front of festive light installations during the Christmas season in Tokyo's Shibuya district, Japan.

RUNGROJ YONGRIT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

A seven-year-old female orangutan, named Shizuka, looks on from inside a cage during a repatriation ceremony of confiscated smuggled orangutans from Thailand to Indonesia. Thailand returned three orangutans smuggled from Indonesia, as part of the country's wildlife trafficking combat initiative.

DAVID W CERNY/REUTERS

A person places a flower at a makeshift shrine, following a shooting in Prague, in the Czech Republic. Police are working to uncover the motive behind the country's worst-ever mass shooting, which saw a student open fire at a university building in central Prague, killing 14 and wounding 25 others.