NEW YORK — Firefighters, survivors and worshippers fill this week’s Photos of the Week, capturing a deadly Hong Kong high-rise blaze, catastrophic floods sweeping Southeast Asia and Pope Leo XIV’s first overseas trip to Turkey and Lebanon. The images show how fast life can break — and how quickly people move to rescue, mourn and rebuild, Dec. 13, 2025.
Photos of the Week: Hong Kong’s blaze leaves a skyline scarred
In Hong Kong, Photos of the Week frames the aftermath in stark contrasts: soot-black towers against winter light, ash drifting over emptied balconies and the eerie quiet of a neighborhood waiting for answers. Officials say the Nov. 26 fire at Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po killed at least 160 people, with the flames ripping through seven residential high-rises and displacing thousands. Investigators have said substandard renovation materials helped fuel the rapid spread, and the city has launched multiple probes — including an independent investigation expected to conclude within nine months, Reuters reported. For many families, the most haunting pictures aren’t the flames — they’re the empty windows, the flower tributes and the long, waiting lines for news that may never come.
Photos of the Week: Southeast Asia floods turn roads into rivers
The floods are so vast they demand an aerial view — and that’s exactly what some of the most gripping Photos of the Week deliver: blown-out bridges, fields erased into muddy lakes and rescue crews threading boats through what used to be city streets. In Indonesia, officials say Sumatra alone will need 51.82 trillion rupiah (about $3.11 billion) for recovery and reconstruction after cyclone-driven floods and landslides killed 950 people and left 274 missing, with the same storm system also blamed for about 200 deaths in southern Thailand and Malaysia, according to Reuters. A separate visual record — built from before-and-after imagery — underscores just how quickly land can transform; Al Jazeera’s satellite-image roundup put the regionwide death toll above 1,800 across multiple countries.
Photos of the Week: Pope Leo XIV steps onto the world stage
Faith, diplomacy and symbolism collide in Photos of the Week as Pope Leo XIV — the first U.S. pope — begins his pontificate outside Rome with a tightly watched trip through Turkey and Lebanon. One of the defining images: Leo in white socks inside Istanbul’s Blue Mosque after removing his shoes in a gesture of respect; he toured the landmark but did not appear to pray, Reuters reported. The journey also carried heavy Christian history — commemorating the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea — and modern grief in Lebanon, where the pope met relatives of victims of the Beirut port explosion and later reflected that “peace is possible,” Vatican News said.
Looking back: continuity behind this week’s images
TIME’s 1996 report on a deadly Hong Kong high-rise fire shows how building design and renovation hazards have long shaped survival.
The Atlantic’s 2011 photo essay on Thailand’s historic floods offers a sobering reminder of how quickly monsoon seasons can become national emergencies.
An AP look back in 2024 details the lingering trauma and stalled justice tied to the 2020 Beirut port blast — the same wound Pope Leo XIV referenced during his visit.
Photos of the Week doesn’t just document tragedy — it captures the split-second courage inside it: the rescuer climbing, the neighbor sharing, the pilgrim praying. And in a week like this, those images don’t fade quickly.
