From house breaking in Johannesburg to hippos on the loose in Tbilisi to rioters attacking a policewoman in Burundi, Reuters photographers tell the story behind some of the most iconic pictures of the year. Here: Protesters drag a female police officer accused of shooting a protester in the Buterere neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi, May 12, 2015. Goran Tomasevic: Protesters started throwing stones at a group of police, who then started to run away. The policewoman in the photo, Medikintos Inabeza, 33, got left behind and then some protesters started to push her, saying that she had shot a female protestor in the stomach with an AK47 rifle. I didn't see anything of that. There were 5 or 10 protesters pushing the policewoman at first, then others came and joined in. Up to 20 or 30 protesters were surrounding her at one point. The protesters kicked and beat her very badly; I also saw a couple of knives. I thought they were going to kill her... (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A stray puppy walks along abandoned train tracks near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on August 19, 2017 near Chornobyl, Ukraine. An estimated 900 stray dogs live in the exclusion zone, many of them likely the descendants of dogs left behind following the mass evacuation of residents in the aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Winner Petra Vlhova from Slovakia celebrates on the podium of the FIS women's World Cup slalom in Zagreb, the “Snow Queen Trophy 2022”, on January 4, 2022. (Photo by Antonio Bronic/Reuters)

Meghan Umphres Leatherman, 9 nine months pregnant and dilated to 1cm seen lifting a heavy weight at her home town gym in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Dave Cruz/Barcroft Media)

An Israeli missile is launched from the Iron Dome missile system in response to a rocket launch from the nearby Palestinian Gaza Strip, on March 12, 2012 near Ashdod, Israel. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

A woman holding carrying a bird cage reacts as people flee following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on November 23, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

Children in Hiroshima, Japan, wearing masks to combat the odour of death after the city was destroyed by the first atom bomb. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images). 1945

Extraordinary images of the cruise ship by Jonathan Danko Kielkowski from his book Concordia, published by White Press. The German photographer swam out to where the ship – which ran aground off Tuscany in 2012 with the loss of 32 lives – is moored. Francesco Schettino, the ship’s captain, was jailed for 16 years over the accident. (Photo by Jonathan Danko Kielkowski)