stolen phone

my phone was stolen 8 months ago, I turned it off & erased it thru the find my iphone feature and set it up to notify me of the phone was turned back on. i’ve received no notification but this morning i woke up to all but 14 of my photos being deleted & random pictures of a kid and pictures of a van in my photo album. the phone reappeared on my icloud account & is in Mexico (i’m in the US). so i logged into icloud, removed the phone from my account but all my photos are gone & i can’t figure out how to retrieve them.