It is destined to become one of the symbolic images of the horror of the war in Ukraine: at the gates of Kiev a woman is sprawled on the sidewalk next to her 8-year-old daughter still with the backpack on her shoulders and another slightly older one who was carrying a trolley.
All three are dead and next to them the woman’s husband, seriously injured and with a bloody face, is being rescued by the Ukrainian military.
The shock photo published by the New York Times was taken by freelance Lynsey Addario (of which we publish an image after the shooting, when the bodies have already been covered with sheets) and tells the tragedy of a family who tried to escape to the capital to escape the Russian advance.
They had a green carrier with them from which a dog barked desperately, the reporter said.
The episode was also documented by the video of another freelance from the US newspaper, Andriy Dubchak, who filmed the moment of the attack.
The parents and two children were attempting to leave Irpin, heading for Kiev along a road that runs parallel to a bridge blown up by Ukrainian soldiers to slow down Russian tanks. Dozens of people were walking that stretch of a hundred meters in small groups.
Suddenly the Moscow military opened fire with mortar rounds, at first further away and then right along the roadThere was a general escape but the area offered no shelter and for the woman and the three children there was nothing to do.
There were only a dozen Ukrainian soldiers nearby, the freelancer said, helping the children carry their luggage.
Other soldiers were fighting and firing with mortars but 200 meters away.
In the morning, the commander of the Ukrainian forces in Irpin had warned on TV that the roads around were unsafe and that without a ceasefire it was impossible to leave the country.
But many civilians still tried their luck to reach Kiev and perhaps from there to a safe place further west.