Photograph by Dimitar Dilkoff—AFP/Getty Images

On April 15, 2013, while driving along the western edge of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, AFP photographer Dimitar Dilkoff came across an odd sight: an overloaded truck lumbering down the road, a young boy clutching a satellite dish riding in the back.

The boy’s family was fleeing the city in the wake of yet another air raid earlier that morning. “One building with people inside was demolished,” Dilkoff tells TIME. “There were many injured. Most people left in the city were very nervous and irate.”

“I took some pictures through the car window with hope that there would be just one in focus,” he says. “After that we lost the truck in heavy traffic.”

The image he captured (above), somewhat softened by the filter of his windshield, was featured in this week’s Pictures of the Week on LightBox and in the New York Times.

“The satellite dish is kind of absurd and useless there,” Dilkoff says, because the greater part of city has been without electricity since it became one of the nation’s central battlegrounds last July. “But it is a very important belonging for that family on their way out of Aleppo.”

“Currently there isn’t a fierce fight between the government army and the rebels,” he adds, “but there are snipers, mortars shelling and air strikes, which make the daily life of the local people very dangerous and unforeseen.”

According to AFP, “some 1.3 million people have fled Syria to neighboring countries since the beginning of the conflict, which has cost well over 70,000 lives.”

—Eugene Reznik

See more of this week’s best photos on LightBox.

Photograph by Manu Brabo—AP

(A Syrian man cries while holding the body of his son, killed by the Syrian Army, near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012.)

Columbia University has announced the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winners for breaking news and feature photography. A five-photographer team from the Associated Press was recognized in the Breaking News photography category for their photographic coverage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. Rodrigo Abd, Manu Brabo, Khalil Hamra, Muhammed Muheisen and Narciso Contreraswere members of the team that contributed to the agency’s coverage of the two-year-old conflict.

See more of the winning work on LightBox.

Photograph by Franco Pagetti—VII

They are a familiar sight to anyone who has been on the frontlines in the embattled Syrian city of Aleppo: striped sheets that once blocked the harsh sunlight or a neighbor’s prying eyes, now acting as shields against more lethal threats. See Franco Pagetti’s photos of the veils of Aleppo here.

Jan. 15, 2013. Two explosions destroyed numerous buildings around the University in Aleppo city, Syria.

See more from TIME’s photos of the week here.

Dec. 30, 2012. A boy watches men dig graves for future casualties of Syria’s civil conflict at Sheikh Saeed cemetery in Azaz city, north of Aleppo, Syria. (Ahmed Jadallah—Reuters)

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

Dec. 10, 2012. Syrian boys, whose family fled their home in Idlib, walk to their tent at a camp for displaced Syrians, in the village of Atmeh, Syria. (Photo: Muhammed Muheisen—AP)

From continued protests in Egypt and a mass wedding in Indonesia to Syrian refugees in Turkey and the Pope’s first tweet, TIME presents the best images of the week. See more on LightBox.

“This image acts as a reminder of courage and strength, illustrated in the actions of the doctor. Dr. Kasem is a gastroenterologist who is labeled a terrorist by Assad’s regime for honoring one of history’s oldest binding documents, the Hippocratic oath, while treating six children wounded by heavy artillery and tank fire.”

“During my nine days in Syria and five days in the besieged Bab Amr district, I worked a total of less than three hours. Just after the tragic shelling of the media center on our first day, I didn’t feel like a photographer anymore — just a human who wanted to save his life. I couldn’t touch my cameras anymore. I felt like they were responsible for the situation we were in and of the death of our friend and colleague.

This picture was shot during one of the rare and short moments during which I became a photographer again. The shelling stopped for a couple of hours, which never really happened during the day. We used this opportunity to cross the quarter by car to see Rémi’s and Marie’s bodies and collect some of their belongings that we couldn’t get before. I shot dozens of pictures from the car. When we passed this place, we drove very fast in fear of the snipers. This is how Bab Amr was at that time. Buildings disemboweled by shelling, an atmosphere of the end of the world.”

Read more here.

Oct. 10, 2012. A wounded Syrian man lies on a boat as he is transferred to Turkey over the Orontes river on the Turkish-Syrian border near the village of Hacipasa in Hatay province. Scores of Syrian civilians, many of them women with screaming children clinging to their necks, crossed Orontes, a narrow river marking the border with Turkey as they fled the fighting in Azmarin and surrounding villages. 

From the Taliban shooting of a 14-year-old activist in Pakistan to the vice-presidential debate in Kentucky to angry protests against the German Chancellor’s visit in Greece and a human tower in Spain, TIME presents the best images of the week.

See more photos here.

Sept. 2, 2012. A Free Syrian Army fighter rests in exhaustion after heavy fighting in Aleppo, Syria. 

From an eruption on the sun and the death of Rev. Sun Myung Moon in South Korea to Redhead Day in the Netherlands and students heading back to school around the world, TIME presents the best images of the week.

See more photos here.