Russian artillery struck a suburb of Kyiv on Sunday morning, resulting in the death of Ukrainian civilians preparing to evacuate the area, according to reports.
The shelling started as mother, father, teenage son, and daughter guessed to be 8-years-old were getting ready to escape the area, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The family never ended up making it out of the city, however. Instead, their bodies lay lifeless at the foot of a monument to local soldiers who had died fighting in World War II, the Journal reported. Only the father had survived, being severely wounded when soldiers reached them, the New York Times reported.
The mortar shells reportedly hit neighborhoods and a battered bridge being used by civilians to flee the fighting in the city, the Times reported.
Some Ukrainian soldiers were near the bridge, reports said around a dozen, but they were not fighting, only helping carry luggage and children attempting to flee. Since Saturday, hundreds of Ukrainian civilians had been clustered around the bridge trying to leave the area.
To get across the bridge, which Ukraine had damaged in order to slow any Russian advancement, required civilians to face 100 yards of exposed street.
When the bombardment began, soldiers ran out and picked up children, running for cover behind a cinder block wall, the Times reported.
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The first shells hit 100 or so yards from the bridge but then hit a section of the street where people were running to escape the bombardment. When mortars continued to get closer to the civilians, people attempted to find safe spots to avoid the artillery, but there was nothing to hide behind, the Journal reported.
Nearby, where the civilians were killed, Ukrainian forces had been engaged in firefights, but there had been no fighting where the innocent were attempting to flee.
This is not the first time civilians have been under fire. Russia has been accused by Ukrainian authorities of targeting evacuation routes after the invading army targeted a railroad track used for evacuations on Saturday, the Times reported.
It has not been made clear how many other civilian casualties resulted in the bombardment, but a nearby house had been set ablaze after taking a direct hit, the Journal reported.
A third round of negotiations between the two countries is scheduled to take place on Monday.
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