Russia’s invasion of Ukraine took an even more horrific turn today.
Lynsey Addario — the 1991 Staples High School Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer — reports with words and images that “a Russian force advancing on Kyiv fired mortar shells … at a battered bridge used by evacuees fleeing the fighting.”
The attack sent “panicked civilians running, kicking up a cloud of dust and leaving three members of a family dead on the pavement.”
Addario’s photo showed that haunting scene.
Ukrainian soldiers trying to save the father of a family of 4 — the only one at that moment who still had a pulse — moments after being hit by a mortar while trying to flee Irpin, near Kyiv, today. (Photo/Lynsey Addario for The New York Times)
Addario’s report continued:
Crowds of hundreds have clustered around the damaged bridge over the Irpin River since Saturday. Ukrainian forces had blown up the bridge earlier to slow the Russian advance. Only a dozen or so Ukrainian soldiers were in the immediate area of the bridge on Sunday, not fighting but helping carry civilians’ luggage and children.
To cross a hundred yards or so of exposed street on the side of the bridge closer to Kyiv, people seeking to flee to the capital formed small groups and made a run for it together. Soldiers ran out, picked up children or luggage, and ran for cover behind a cinder block wall.
The mortar shells fell first 100 or so yards from the bridge, then shifted in a series of thunderous blasts into a section of street where people were fleeing.
Click here for the full story. (Hat tip: Ernest Lorimer)