Pictures of the year - February
In February 2013 fierce clashes bubbled in Mali after France sent in troops the previous month to combat al Qaeda-linked rebels in control of the country's arid north.
In South Africa, Olympic and Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged with shooting dead his girlfriend in one of the most high-profile murder cases of recent years. And in Syria, the brutal civil war ground on. Below are a selection of some of the strongest images of the month.
A man runs through the desert after a snowstorm near Tabuk, in the northwest of Saudi Arabia.
A worker carries a mummified body to a mass grave after it was exhumed at the municipal cemetery in Guatemala City. Empolyees at the graveyard exhume bodies from niches if cemetery fees go unpaid. The bodies, tagged with identification, are then placed in a mass grave should relatives come back to claim them.
Women dance at a private gay club in St. Petersburg shortly after Russia’s parliament backed a draft law banning "homosexual propaganda". The bill was heavily criticised by human rights activists.
A girl sketches a nude model during an art workshop in Mexico City.
Ronnie Chambers Jr. looks at his mother Tahitah Myles as she collapses during the funeral of his father, who was killed in a shooting in Chicago.
Malians attend Friday prayers at the Djinguereber mosque in the centre of Timbuktu shortly after the ancient Saharan trading town was recaptured from Islamist rebel occupiers by French and Malian troops.
Supporters of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party hold torches during a gathering in Athens.
Women undergo military training in Aleppo.
Women, dressed in fifties-style outfits, cool off their feet in a swimming pool during the Rockin' Race Jamboree, a rock'n'roll festival in southern Spain.
A woman is rescued from floodwaters in the Chalandri suburb of Athens by a resident standing on top of her car.
