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From deadly floods in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, to antigovernment protests in the Philippines and demonstrations in Italy to show solidarity with Gaza, here is a look at the week in photos.

History Illustrated is a series of perspectives that puts news events and current affairs into historical context, using graphics generated with artificial intelligence.

A devastating fire swept through Dhaka’s sprawling Korail shantytown, destroying or damaging some 1,500 shanties and reducing tin-roofed dwellings to smouldering ruins, officials reported.

The inferno, which erupted on Tuesday evening, required 16 hours to extinguish, according to Rashed Bin Khalid, a duty officer at the fire department.

Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Tajul Islam Chowdhury, the fire service’s director, confirmed approximately 1,500 shanties were burned or damaged, leaving thousands without shelter.

Official records indicate about 60,000 families — many displaced by climate disasters — inhabit this 65-hectare (160-acre) shantytown. Korail sits adjacent to Dhaka’s affluent Gulshan and Banani districts, surrounded by modern high-rise developments.

Dense smoke enveloped the area as flames consumed dwellings throughout the night.

By Wednesday, displaced residents desperately sifted through debris, attempting to salvage their belongings.

Firefighters reported difficulty accessing the blaze due to the area’s narrow pathways.

Dhaka, home to 10.2 million people as of 2024, contains hundreds of informal settlements populated by rural migrants fleeing poverty, exploitation, and climate-related calamities. Those living there typically survive on daily wages earned as rickshaw drivers, housemaids, and cleaners.

The tourist boats that typically navigate Kenya’s renowned Lake Naivasha have recently taken on a new role: rescuing hundreds from inundated homes.

Though the lake’s water level has been increasing for more than a decade with repeated flooding, residents of the modest Kihoto district are stunned by this year’s unprecedented scale.

“It hasn’t happened like this before,” said resident Rose Alero.

According to local officials, the Rift Valley lake has advanced an unprecedented 1.5km (about 1 mile) inland.

“People are suffering,” said Alero, a 51-year-old grandmother, noting that many neighbours have fallen ill.

In her home, water reaches waist height, while throughout the district, toilets are overflowing.

“People are stuck … they have nowhere to go.”

The devastation is widespread: hundreds of homes are completely underwater, churches are destroyed, and police stations are submerged, surrounded by floating vegetation.

During one sudden water surge, children evacuated a school on improvised rafts.

Joyce Cheche, Nakuru County’s disaster risk management head, estimates 7,000 people have been displaced by the rising waters, which also impact wildlife and threaten tourism and commerce.

The county has provided transport assistance and implemented health measures, Cheche said, though financial compensation has not been offered yet.

Workers in the crucial flower export sector are avoiding work, fearing cholera and landslides.

She also highlighted the danger of encounters with the lake’s numerous hippos.

“We didn’t see it coming,” Cheche admitted.

At the lake’s edge, bare acacia trunks that were once lush now stand submerged in waters advancing about 1 metre (3.3 feet) daily.

This phenomenon affects other Rift Valley lakes and has displaced hundreds of thousands.

Numerous studies primarily attribute this to increased rainfall driven by climate change.

However, Kenyan geologist John Lagat, regional manager at the state-owned Geothermal Development Corporation, points to tectonics as the main cause, noting the lakes’ position along a major geological fault.

When English settlers arrived in the late 19th century, the lake was even larger before shifting tectonic plates reduced it to just 1km (0.6 miles) in diameter by 1921.

Subsequent tectonic movements increasingly sealed underground outflows, trapping water, Lagat explained, though he acknowledged that increased rainfall and land degradation from population growth also play a “substantial” role in flooding.

“We are very worried,” said Alero from her flooded home, dreading the upcoming rainy season.

“We can’t tell what will happen.”

Tens of thousands of people have thronged the streets of an Amazonian city hosting the COP30 talks, dancing to pounding speakers in the first large-scale protest at a United Nations climate summit in years.

As the first week of climate negotiations limped to a close with nations deadlocked, Indigenous people and activists sang, chanted, and rolled a giant beach ball of Earth through Belem under a searing sun.

Others held a mock funeral procession for fossil fuels, dressed in black and posing as grieving widows as they carried three coffins marked with the words “coal”, “oil” and “gas”.

It was the first major protest outside the annual climate talks since COP26 four years ago in Glasgow, as the last three gatherings had been held in locations with little tolerance for demonstrations – Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan.

Called the “Great People’s March” by the organisers, the Belem rally came at the halfway point of difficult negotiations and followed two Indigenous-led protests that disrupted proceedings earlier in the week.

“Today we are witnessing a massacre as our forest is being destroyed,” said Benedito Huni Kuin, a 50-year-old member of the Huni Kuin Indigenous group from western Brazil.

“We want to make our voices heard from the Amazon and demand results,” he added. “We need more Indigenous representatives at COP to defend our rights.”

Their demands include “reparations” for damages caused by corporations and governments, particularly to marginalised communities.

After a 4.5km (2.8-mile) march through the city, the demonstration halted a few blocks from the COP30 venue, where authorities deployed soldiers to protect the site.

Inside the venue, COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago admitted that the first exhaustive week of negotiations had failed to yield a breakthrough and urged diplomats not to run down the clock with time-wasting manoeuvres.

Countries remained at odds over trade measures and weak climate targets, while a showdown looms over demands that wealthy nations triple the finance they provide to poorer states to adapt to a warming world.

From communities in the Philippines battling climate-driven displacement and devastating floods, to solemn mass burials of Palestinians in Gaza, and demonstrations in Brazil as it hosts COP 30 – here is a look at the week in photos.

A suffocating blanket of smog has engulfed India’s capital, permeating the air with an acrid smell as pollution levels soar, intensifying a public health emergency that has driven residents to demand governmental action.

By Monday morning, New Delhi’s air quality index had reached 344, categorised as “severe” and hazardous to breathe according to the World Health Organization’s recommended exposure thresholds.

In a compelling demonstration of public concern, dozens of protesters assembled in New Delhi on Sunday, calling for government intervention to combat the capital’s toxic air crisis as dangerous haze shrouded the city.

Children joined their parents at the demonstration, wearing protective masks and carrying placards, including one that starkly declared: “I miss breathing.”

New Delhi, home to a metropolitan population of 30 million people, persistently ranks among the world’s most polluted capital cities.

Every winter, a toxic smog obscures the skyline when cooler temperatures trap pollutants close to ground level, creating a deadly combination of emissions from agricultural burning, industrial operations, and vehicle exhaust.

Levels of PM2.5 – carcinogenic particles small enough to penetrate the bloodstream – regularly surge to concentrations 60 times above the UN’s recommended daily health guidelines.

“Today I am here just as a mother,” said protester Namrata Yadav, who attended the protest with her son. “I am here because I don’t want to become a climate refugee.”

At the protest location near India Gate, the historic war memorial, PM2.5 readings surpassed the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum by more than 13 times.

“Year after year, it is the same story, but there is no solution,” said Tanvi Kusum, a lawyer who explained she joined because she was “frustrated”.

“We have to build pressure so that the government at least takes up the issue seriously.”

Government measures to tackle the crisis have proven inadequate, including limited restrictions on fossil fuel vehicles and water trucks spraying mist to suppress airborne particulate matter.

“Pollution is cutting our lives,” declared a young woman who identified herself as “speaking for Delhi” and declined to provide her name.

Research published in The Lancet Planetary Health last year estimated that 3.8 million deaths in India between 2009 and 2019 were attributable to air pollution.

The United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, cautions that contaminated air dramatically increases children’s susceptibility to acute respiratory infections.

As evening descended on the smog-veiled skyline, the crowd expanded until police stepped in, forcing several activists onto a bus and seizing their protest materials, claiming they lacked proper demonstration permits.

One partially torn sign captured the essence of their plea: “I just want to breathe.”

On Marajo Island, at the confluence of the Amazon River and Atlantic Ocean in northern Brazil, life ebbs and flows with the tides.

For more than four decades, Ivanil Brito found paradise in her modest stilt house, just 20 metres (65ft) from the shoreline, where she and her husband Catito fished, cultivated crops, and tended to livestock.

“I was a very happy person in that little piece of land. That was my paradise,” she says.

That paradise vanished during a violent storm in February 2024, when relentless waters surged through Vila do Pesqueiro town, eroding the coastline that had nourished generations. “Even though we didn’t move far, it feels like a completely different world,” says Ivanil from their new settlement less than a kilometre (half a mile) inland. “This is a mangrove area – hotter, noisier, and not a place where we can raise animals or grow crops.”

Vila do Pesqueiro, home to about 160 families, lies within the Soure Marine Extractive Reserve, a protected area under the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. Established to preserve traditional ways of life and sustainable resource management, the reserve now confronts the harsh realities of climate change. While fishing remains the primary livelihood, local cuisine and tourism provide supplementary income to the residents. Yet, intensifying tides and accelerating erosion threaten their existence.

For Ivanil’s son Jhonny, a fisherman studying biology at Universidade do Para, in the Marajo-Soure campus, these transformations are worrying. “The place where our houses used to be is now underwater,” he says. “For me, moving isn’t just about safety – it’s about protecting the place and the people who shaped my life.”

Meanwhile, residents like Benedito Lima and his wife Maria Lima have chosen to remain, despite their home now standing perilously close to the water’s edge. Leaving would mean surrendering their livelihood. “Every new tide shakes the ground,” Benedito says, gazing towards what used to be a safely distant canal. “This isn’t even the high-tide season yet.”

Climate adaptation here takes various forms. Some rebuild farther inland, while others adjust their daily routines to accommodate the sea’s advance. Community leader Patricia Ribeiro believes a collective resilience sustains Vila do Pesqueiro. “Our stories have always been passed down through generations,” she says. “This is our home, our ancestry. We want to stay here to protect what our families built. As long as we’re together, we won’t give up.”

As Brazil prepares to host the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in nearby Belem, communities like Vila do Pesqueiro exemplify what is at stake. Through its initiatives, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says it supports efforts to enhance resilience, protect livelihoods, and ensure these families can continue living safely on their ancestral lands.

This photo gallery was provided by the International Organization for Migration.

Pakistan has welcomed Sikh pilgrims from India in the first major crossing since their deadly conflict in May closed the land border between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

More than 2,100 pilgrims were granted visas to attend a 10-day festival marking 556 years since the birth of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, a decision that was in line with efforts to promote “interreligious and intercultural harmony and understanding”, Pakistan’s high commission in New Delhi said last week.

In May, Islamabad and New Delhi engaged in their worst fighting since 1999, leaving more than 70 people dead. The Wagah-Attari border, the only active land crossing between the two countries, was closed to general traffic after the violence.

On Wednesday, the pilgrims will gather at Nankana Sahib, Guru Nanak’s birthplace west of Lahore, before visiting other sacred sites in Pakistan, including Kartarpur, where the guru is buried.

The Kartarpur Corridor, a visa-free route opened in 2019 to allow Indian Sikhs to visit the temple without crossing the main border, has remained closed since the conflict.

Four days of conflict erupted in May after New Delhi accused Islamabad of backing a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, allegations Pakistan denied.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded in the 15th century in Punjab, a region spanning parts of present-day India and Pakistan. While most Sikhs migrated to India during partition, some of their most revered places of worship are in Pakistan.

A magnitude 6.3 earthquake has shaken northern Afghanistan, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 500, a health official says, adding that the numbers could increase.

The quake’s epicentre on Monday was located 22km (14 miles) west-southwest of the town of Khulm, and it struck at 12:59am (20:29 GMT on Sunday) at a depth of 28km (17 miles), the United States Geological Survey said.

Sharafat Zaman, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Public Health, said 534 injured people and 20 bodies had been brought to hospitals in Balkh and Samangan provinces. Rescuers were on the scene and the figures were changing, he added.

In the nearby province of Badakhshan, the quake damaged or destroyed 800 houses in one village in the Shahr-e-Bozorg district, said Ihsanullah Kamgar, spokesperson for the provincial police headquarters.

However, due to a lack of internet service in the remote area, there were still no accurate casualty figures, he added.

Yousaf Hammad, a spokesperson for the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority, said most of the injured suffered minor wounds and were discharged after treatment.

In the Afghan capital, Kabul, the Ministry of Defence announced that rescue and emergency teams had reached the quake-affected areas in Balkh and Samangan, which suffered the most damage, and were transporting the injured and assisting others.

The Defence Ministry said a rockslide briefly blocked a main mountain highway linking Kabul with Mazar-i-Sharif but the road was later reopened. It said some people who had been injured and trapped along the highway were transported to hospital.