Jan. 27, 2013. Relatives wait to identify victims killed in the Kiss night club fire, at the municipal gymnasium in Santa Maria, Brazil. (Photo: Jefferson Bernards—AFP/Getty Images)

See more of the week’s best images at TIME LightBox.

Community members leave the East London Mosque after Eid prayers in London. Combined with the adjoining London Muslim Centre, it is one of the largest mosques in the United Kingdom. Nov. 16, 2010. (Photo: Bharat Choudhary)

Getty Images announced the winners of their 2012 Editorial Photography competition at Visa Pour l’Image, the annual festival of photojournalism held in Perpignan, France. Four photographers will receive more than $80,000 in funding.

Mauricio Lima—New York Times

Anti-Gaddafi fighters from Benghazi engage on a firefight with snipers loyalists to Col. Muammar el-Gaddafi during a street battle inside Gaddafi’s hometown city of Sirte, Libya, on Oct. 19, 2011.

An exhibit of photographs from Libya by Mauricio Lima—his first solo show in Brazil—is open at the Tiradentes Photo Festival through March 18. More info here (in Portuguese). 

Felipe Dana—AP

February  8, 2012. Morgue workers remove the body of a man killed during a shooting from the crime scene at Itinga neighborhood in Salvador, Brazil. About one-third of Bahia state’s 30,000 patrolling police went on strike last week. During the strike the murder rate in Salvador, the nation’s third-largest city, doubled.

From snow storms in Rome and Superbowl XLVI to protests in Egypt and Queen Elizabeth II’s Jubilee, TIME’s photo department presents the best images of the week. See the whole gallery here.

Cristobal Saavedra—Reuters

The average animal doesn’t make headlines, but countless creatures have been photographed amid the chaos and destruction so widely connected to some of the year’s biggest stories. Here, LightBox looks back on a few furry friends who’ve found themselves in harm’s way this year. See more here.