AP photos in 2024 show a Middle East riven by wars, but also moments of grace

An Israeli bomb hangs suspended in air, caught in a split-second image of a suburb in Beirut before it slams into an apartment building, passersby already bracing for the explosion.

An Israeli woman grieves, the deep lines of wrinkles stark as she thinks of a man killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel whose body the militants spirited away into the Gaza Strip.

And in Gaza itself, children weep, their faces confronted in terror as they cover their ears after yet another Israeli bombardment of the besieged strip against the Mediterranean Sea.

Across the Middle East this year, Associated Press photographers froze these moments in time, reflections of the wars and their horrors that have upended life across the region.

The initial 2023 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 people in Israel and saw 250 others taken hostage, gave way to the grinding Israeli ground offensive and airstrike campaign in the Gaza Strip. There, local health officials put the death toll from the war at more than 44,000 Palestinians as hostilities continue. They don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in their count but say more than half the dead were women and children.

The war expanded to an Israeli invasion and an intensified aerial bombardment of Lebanon in October. Israel said that it targeted sites associated with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia. There, the fighting broadly ended after some two months. Lebanon’s Heath Ministry says more than 4,000 people have been killed since Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel.

But even in the worst, their lens captured haunting, still moments reflecting how life carries on even in the chaos.

In one image, a volunteer kisses two kittens rescued from the rubble of another Israeli airstrike in Beirut. His face is smudged with soot. One of the kittens, eyes closed, meows with its tiny claws extended.

In the Gaza Strip, another photograph resembles a still life painting as golden rays of morning light hang in the dusty air as a Palestinian man in shadow uses a shovel to clean away debris from what was once a kitchen.

Then there was for many the year’s biggest surprise in December. After more than 50 years of rule, the Assad family of Syria lost control of the country in the face of a lightning rebel advance. One AP photo showed a painting of deposed President Bashar Assad’s father, Hafez, lay mutilated in one hall of power. Rebels waved their assault rifles above their head in a street in Damascus in another, a moment captured as they raced by on a motorbike.

And as 2025 looms, everything feels like it remains in motion in the wider Middle East. Its only these images and the fleeting moments they capture, that remain frozen.

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Read the AP’s Mideast news: https://apnews.com/hub/middle-east.