Photos Of The Week (December 2-8)

A firework explodes amid clashes between police and opposition protesters in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. 

People look at Christmas decorations in front of the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria. 

Firefighters try to extinguish a blaze that broke out at the Rimpa Plaza commercial building in Karachi, Pakistan, on December 3. 

People with red paint on their hands, symbolizing blood, leave imprints on the pavement during a protest about the collapse of a concrete canopy at the railway station in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, which killed 15 people last month. 

A statue of Gjerg Kastrioti Skanderbeg -- a 15th-century Albanian leader who led a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire -- which was recently unveiled in the Montenegrin town of Tuzi.

A pro-EU protester wears a gas mask at anti-government demonstrations in Tbilisi, Georgia. 

People try to extinguish fires following an air strike that targeted Syria's rebel-held northern city of Idlib on December 2. Since Russia intervened in the civil war in Syria, its aerial attacks have played a crucial role in propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A woman holds a portrait and the military uniform of her son during a commemoration event of fallen Ukrainian soldiers in the center of Kharkiv on December 6. (file photo)

Afghan medical students attend their final exams at a college in Kabul. The Taliban government in Afghanistan has announced a ban on women's enrollment in medical institutions, halting their attendance of courses such as midwifery, nursing, dental prosthetics, and laboratory studies, while allowing them to take final exams.

People shout slogans and wave Romanian and EU flags during a  pro-Europe rally ahead of a presidential runoff in downtown Bucharest that was ultimately canceled by a Constitutional Court ruling. . 

Iranians sit in a park as smog obscures the skyline in Tehran. 

Workers decorate a Christmas tree at Saint Sophia's Cathedral in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

Russian military cadets pose for a photograph at the Hermitage State Museum in St. Petersburg.

An Afghan vendor sells balloons along a street on the outskirts of Mazar-e-Sharif. 

Pakistani youths exercise in a park engulfed in dense smog in Lahore. 

An Afghan boy walks across a footbridge during the first snowfall in the Dara district of Afghanistan's Panjshir Province.