Roughly a minute after an American paramedic, Pete Reed, and a team of aid workers began tending to a wounded civilian in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on February 2, they were attacked.

Reed, a former US Marine volunteering on the war’s front lines, was killed, and several of his colleagues were wounded.

Volunteers at the scene initially attributed the strike to indiscriminate Russian shelling. But a frame-by-frame analysis of a video taken at the location — and shared with The New York Times — shows that Reed, who was unarmed, died in a targeted strike by a guided missile almost certainly fired by Russian troops.

It is unclear if the Russians knew the group was made up of aid workers. But its convoy had markings that should have signalled to the Russians the 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 usually fired when a gunman sees and selects a target.

Still, the target in this case, a white Mercedes-Benz van, did not have any 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 beside the white van, which they were using to transport humanitarian supplies. A missile flying parallel to the ground directly hits the van, destroying it and killing Reed.

The video was filmed on a smartphone by Erko Laidinen, an Estonian volunteer with an organisation called Frontline Medics who was trailing just behind Reed.

The footage appears to show that the strike involved a Kornet anti-tank guided missile, which has a range of around three miles.

Reed and the aid workers were at a slightly elevated position along a street that led toward the Russian front line, around two miles away.

New York Times News Service