A Hindu devotee offers prayers during Shivaratri festival at Sri Parvathi Jadala Ramalingeshwara Swamy Devastanamu, in Narketpally, India, Wednesday, February 26, 2025. (Photo by Mahesh Kumar A./AP Photo)

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)

People wearing bear furs perform during a festival of New Year ritual dances attended by hundreds in Comanesti, northern Romania, Wednesday, December 30 2015. In pre-Christian rural traditions, dancers wearing colored costumes or animal furs, toured from house to house in villages singing and dancing to ward off evil, in the present the tradition has moved to Romania's cities too, where dancers travel to perform the ritual for money. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

A Filipino woman wears a mask to try and protect against the spread of coronavirus in Malate district, Manila City on March 24, 2020. The Philippines has taken drastic measures to combat the spread of Covid-19. The entire country is under strict quarantine and the army is on the streets to monitor compliance. According to official figures, there are 462 positive cases and 33 dead in the Philippines, but it is thought that thousands of cases remain undetected due to lack of resources in a country where millions of people have no access to health care. In the poorest and most crowded areas, it’s almost impossible to adhere to the physical distancing required during quarantine. (Photo by Alejandro Ernesto/The Guardian)

Waiters pose at their terrace of their restaurant rue de Buci in Paris on June 2, 2020, as cafes and restaurants reopen in France, while the country eases lockdown measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus). (Photo by Martin Bureau/AFP Photo)

A pregnant woman poses on June 19, 2018 in Vertou, western France. France had an estimated population of 68.4 million by January 1, 2024, representing a further year-on-year increase of 0.3 percent, limited by a marked drop in the birth rate, the INSEE national statistics bureau of France reported on January 16, 2024. In 2023, 678,000 babies were born in France, 6.6 percent fewer than the previous year, the lowest number of births in any year since 1946. Over the same period, there were 631,000 deaths, down 6.5 percent on 2022, a year marked by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and episodes of extreme heat. (Photo by Loic Venance/AFP Photo)

Members of the Maori community march in a protest rally to criticise the government for its policies affecting the Indigenous Maori population in Wellington on November 19, 2024. (Photo by Sanka Vidanagama/AFP Photo)

Relatives of Ukrainian photographer Maksim Levin, killed while covering Russia's attack on Ukraine, react during his funeral in the town of Boiarka, outside of Kyiv, Ukraine on April 4, 2022. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)