But there were no images from Nigeria where as many as 2,000 people may have perished in an attack carried out by the militant group Boko Haram.
The attack began on January 3 in the town of Baga in the northeastern part of the country, and the fighting continued on Friday, according to a statement released by the Amnesty International.
"If reports that the town was largely razed to the ground and that hundreds or even as many as 2,000 civilians were killed are true, this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram’s ongoing onslaught against the civilian population,” said Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International.
The Associated Press reported that "hundreds of bodies ‒ too many to count ‒ remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria”.
Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for a civilian defence group that fights Boko Haram told the news agency, “No one could attend to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died by now."
The Washington Post said that the reports, if true, "would mean the group equalled its total kill count last year in one attack”.
But the Los Angeles Times cast doubts over the 2,000 casualty figure, relying on the word of a government official who had been quoted by the Nigerian media.
That it should take a week for news of the attack to find its way into global networks, and even then for the full facts to remain shrouded in mystery, is proof that the world is still not flat, neither the real one nor the one that makes it way to your screens.