Mexico City.- About a minute after an American paramedic, Pete Reed, and a team of aid workers began treating a wounded civilian in the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut on February 2, they came under fire.
Reed, a former US Marine who volunteered on the front lines, was killed and several of his colleagues wounded.
Volunteers at the scene initially attributed the attack to indiscriminate Russian shelling. But a frame-by-frame analysis of video taken at the scene, and shared with The New York Times, shows that Reed, who was unarmed, was killed in a targeted attack by a near-precision guided missile fired by Russian troops.
It is not clear if the Russians knew the group consisted of aid workers. But his convoy had markings that should have told the Russians what type of vehicles they were hitting.
One of the vehicles was clearly marked with a red cross, and the type of weapon used in the attack, a laser-guided anti-tank missile, is typically fired when a gunman sees and selects a target.
Still, the target in this case, a white Mercedes-Benz van, had no clearly visible medical markings, and while the aid workers were unarmed, at least one medic was wearing military-style camouflage.
The video shows Reed and the group of aid workers standing next to the white van, which they were using to transport humanitarian supplies.
A missile flying parallel to the ground hits the van directly, destroying it and killing Reed.
The video was filmed on a smartphone by Erko Laidinen, an Estonian volunteer from an organization called Frontline Medics who was after Reed.
The images appear to show that the attack involved a Kornet anti-tank guided missile, which has a range of around nearly 5 kilometers.
Reed and the aid workers were in a slightly elevated position along a street that led toward the Russian front line, about 3 kilometers away.
Laidinen said his vehicle’s dash cam had also recorded the episode and the footage showed a second missile attack, which was aimed at another vehicle but missed its target. The footage has yet to be made public.
A volunteer named Roma, who was standing near Reed when the missile hit and was injured in the blast, told the Times in an interview that there were no military units nearby. One of the vehicles on the scene was clearly marked as an ambulance.
He provided only his name for security reasons.
A photograph published by The Wall Street Journal shows a wounded Norwegian doctor fleeing the scene of the attack.
It also shows the ambulance marked with a red cross on a white background across the street from where Reed and other volunteers were attacked.
The experts noted that the type of weapon used should have allowed the attacker to identify the nature of the target.
“With weapons like these, the shooter is expected to have the ability to differentiate between a medical worker and a combatant,” said Marc Garlasco, a war crimes investigator who is in Poland training Ukrainian teams investigating war crimes.
Garlasco added that the episode required further investigation, but that on its face it was a “potential war crime.”
A video of the aftermath shows the aid workers’ white van destroyed by the attack. Rubble is scattered around the area, and a body lies lifeless on the ground.
Bakhmut, an industrial city surrounded by salt mines with a pre-war population of about 70,000, has been under heavy shelling since the summer.
In recent weeks, Russian troops have come ever closer to encircling the city.
With a small civilian population still present in the city, aid workers like Reed and his teammates have served as lifelines for people sheltering in unheated basements with dwindling rations.
On Monday, the Ukrainian army said it would no longer allow aid groups into the city.
Reed and his team were alerted by Ukrainian troops to a wounded civilian who had just returned from the area.
The street had been under shelling or missile attack at some point: at least one other vehicle had been destroyed in the same area, though it was not clear when, Roma said.
Ukrainian Forces roam the battlefield in all types of civilian vehicles, including private sedans and school buses.
Therefore, it is possible that Reed was targeted because his team had simply entered a kill zone frequently attacked by Russian troops.
