The Week in Pictures: March 17 - 24, 2017 - NBC News

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1.
Skier Michele Maccabelli races the Lofoten Skimo in Svolvar, Norway on March 18, 2017. The arctic race is one of three ski mountaineering competitions which take participants through the Lofoten Islands.

Kai-Otto Melau / Getty Images





2.
Part of the damaged Sewol ferry sits between two barges after being raised during a salvage operation off the southwestern island of Jindo, South Korea on March 23.

Salvage crews towed the corroded 6,800-ton South Korean ferry toward a transport vessel. The massive attempt to bring the ferry back to shore, nearly three years after it sank, killing 304 people, was closely watched by a nation that still vividly remembers the horrific accident.

Most of the victims on April 16, 2014, were students on a high school trip, touching off an outpouring of national grief and soul searching about long-ignored public safety and regulatory failures. Public outrage over what was seen as a botched rescue job by the government contributed to the recent ouster of Park Geun-hye as president.

PHOTOS: South Korea's Sewol Ferry Sinks

STR / AFP - Getty Images





3.
A woman lies injured after a shotting incident on Westminster Bridge in London on March 22.

Toby Melville / Reuters





4.
A boy rides his bike past destroyed cars and houses in a neighborhood recently liberated by Iraqi security forces, on the western side of Mosul, Iraq on March 19. The battle for western Mosul, including the narrow alleyways of the old city, looks to be the most devastating yet for Iraqi civilians trapped between advancing troops and increasingly desperate ISIS militants.

Felipe Dana / AP





5.
President Donald Trump sits in the driver's seat of an 18-wheeler as he welcomed truck drivers and trucking CEOs to the White House to discuss health care on March 23.

PHOTOS: Rigged! President Turns 18-Wheeler Into a Trump Truck

Jim Lo Scalzo / EPA





6.
Animal tamer Pavel Kudrya sits with a circus bear at his dacha, a country house, in Russia's Kalachyovsky District. Kudrya keeps two bears that performed in the Russian Bears show at his dacha ever since the Russian state circus company was downsized in 2014.

Dmitry Rogulin / TASS via Getty Images





7.
A cloud of smoke billows after a massive fire at a military arsenal in Ukraine's Kharkiv region near the border with Russia on March 23. The fire at the depot in Balaklia, which holds large-caliber artillery rounds and is one of Ukraine's largest, erupted early Thursday, prompting the evacuation of around 20,000 people.

Pavlo Pakhomenko / EPA





8.
Conservative lawmaker Tobias Ellwood performs first aid on a wounded police officer, who later died after getting stabbed in the Parliament attack in London on March 22. Ellwood, a former army officer whose brother died in the 2002 Bali bombing, gave mouth-to-mouth-resuscitation to Constable Keith Palmer after he was stabbed by attacker Khalid Masood as he was guarding the Parliament.

A knife-wielding man went on a deadly rampage in the heart of Britain's seat of power Wednesday, plowing a car into pedestrians on London's Westminster Bridge before stabbing Palmer inside the gates of Parliament. Five people were killed, including the assailant, and 40 others were injured.

Stefan Rousseau / PA via Abaca





9.
A relative kisses the body of 17-year old Palestinian Mahmoud Hattab during his funeral at the Jalazoun refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah on March 24.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli troops killed Hattab and wounded three others when soldiers opened fire on their car in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said the men had exited their vehicle near a Jewish settlement and "hurled fire bombs" at the community. It said the soldiers fired at the attackers, who fled the scene in their vehicle.

Majdi Mohammed / AP





10.
A woman who said she was from Sudan and her child are met by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers after illegally crossing the U.S.-Canada border leading into Hemmingford, Quebec, Canada on March 23.

Several hundred asylum seekers have entered Canada as U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to crack down on immigration.

Christinne Muschi / Reuters





11.
A malnourished child is processed by an aid worker for a UNICEF- funded program catered to children displaced by drought, at a facility in Baidoa, Somalia on March 15 during a worsening drought that threatens millions of people in the Horn of Africa nation.

Somalia recently declared the drought a national disaster amid warnings of a full-blown famine. The country faced a similar crisis in 2011 that killed nearly 260,000 people.

The current drought, which the United Nations says threatens about half of Somalia's population, or roughly 6 million people, is part of a four-nation humanitarian crisis that the U.N. has called the largest since the world body was formed in 1945.

Tony Karumba / AFP - Getty Images





12.
President Donald Trump listens during a meeting with truckers and trucking executives on health care in the White House on March 23.

Doug Mills / The New York Times via Redux





13.
Displaced Iraqis fleeing fighting between Iraqi security forces and ISIS militants, board a truck before being taken to a camp on the western side of Mosul, Iraq on March 23.

Felipe Dana / AP





14.
Iraqi women cry over their brother's body, who was killed by a mortar shell fired by ISIS militants on civilians gathered to receive aid in the Al-Risala neighborhood in western Mosul on March 22. Iraqi forces continued their offensive to retake the city from ISIS control.

The civilian population is perhaps the main reason ISIS fighters have been able to hold out so long and turn Mosul into such a grueling battle. It took months for Iraqi forces to drive them out of eastern Mosul while trying to avoid high casualties among residents amid house-to-house battles. Now some 2,000 militants, by a coalition estimate, are holed up in western Mosul with 700,000 civilians. ISIS fighters are holding most of those civilians hostage as shields, while forcing some to flee as cover for their troops.

Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP - Getty Images





15.
An Arabian oryx is seen at a sanctuary in Um al-Zamool, near the United Arab Emirates' border with Saudi Arabia on March 23. The sanctuary stretches over approximately 3,400 square miles with almost 155 oryxes, which were reintroduced into habitat after a five-year conservation plan prompted by fears of their extinction.

Karim Sahib / AFP - Getty Images





16.
Belgian Catherine Bloemen, 86, sits among more than 20,000 stuffed and plastic toys, she has collected for more than 65 years, in her house in Brussels on March 21.

Yves Herman / Reuters





17.
A pair of English bulldogs nuzzle as the American Kennel Club announced the most popular dog breeds of 2016 in New York on Tuesday. Labrador retrievers extended their record run in the top spot, leading the American Kennel Club's new rankings for a 26th straight year. English bulldogs were fourth.

Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images