The Middle East Framed - regional photography for December 9, 2020

We bring you the best images from the Middle East and North Africa

A Palestinian woman looks at a protective mask featuring a hotline number distributed by ABAAD at the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. ABAAD, a resource centre for gender equality, distributed masks to women and social workers in Beirut, with the 24/7 helpline of the NGO hidden inside the mask. Many women who are on the frontline, providing safety to their families and their surroundings, are still at risk of sexual harassment, abuse and gender-based violence. AFP

Mohamed Hamdy Boshta holds up a scorpion at his company, Cairo Venom Company, a project which houses thousands of scorpions in various farms across Egypt. Scorpions are hunted on Egyptian deserts and shores to extract their prized venom for medicinal use. REUTERS

A damaged house remains derelict three years after Iraqi forces defeated the Islamic State group, in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq. Mosul remains for many the symbol of the Islamic State group’s reign of terror, the place from where it proclaimed its caliphate in 2014. It's also where IS made its last stand before the city was freed three years later, after a costly battle that killed thousands and left Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in ruins. AP Photo

Athari Alkhaldi, the first Saudi woman to qualify and participate in the King Abdulaziz Falconry Festival, holds a falcon during the show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. REUTERS

Syrian schoolchildren wearing masks sit at a makeshift school set up by locals in the village of Ma'arin on the outskirts of Azaz in the rebel-controlled northern countryside of Syria's Aleppo province. AFP

Bereket Weldgebriel, an Ethiopian refugee and english and music teacher, gives a class to grade four refugees, who fled the Tigray conflict, at a makeshift classroom set up by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) at Um Raquba refugee camp in Gedaref, eastern Sudan. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has registered 722 students from grades one through 10 at Um Raquba refugee camp. According to the UN refugee agency, 45 per cent of the refugees are children. AFP

Yaqub al-Natsheh, a Palestinian glass-blower, shapes glass at a workshop in the old city of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. AFP

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