Spanish photographer Emilio Morenatti has managed to snap an image that has become emblematic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The picture, which has been featured in newspapers around the world, shows hundreds of Ukrainians huddling beneath a bombed-out bridge as the attempt to flee across the Irpin River on the outskirts of Kyiv on March 5.
Morenatti, 52, has won a Pulitzer Prize for his photography and currently serves as chief photo editor for the Associated Press in Spain and Portugal. He has been in Ukraine since mid-February, prior the start of the current war.
Speaking to Israel Hayom about the bridge photo as he leaves Ukraine for Poland, Morenatti says, "I had gone there [the Irpin River] two days earlier. A series of elements created a picture that tells what happened.
"We located the place and went back. I thought it would be the same as it had been a day before, but long before I got to the bridge, we discovered a flood of people fleeing. There were people walking in the streets and on the highway, families with their children and possessions," he says.
"What I never imagined was that the more I moved forward, the fuller the bridge became. It was so full that they were piling into the part underneath so they could go across it," Morenatti adds. "There were loud sounds of artillery that were causing people to look scared, and then there was this moment when I could see that there were a lot of people who meant to cross it. The hundreds of people gathered under the bridge are the ones who were about to leave, rushing to avoid becoming targets. That's what happened a day later – four people were killed by a mortar fired from Russian territory, apparently Russian artillery," he says.