US photojournalist Juan Arredondo injured during attack in Ukraine that killed filmmaker Brent Renaud

Photographer and adjunct professor at prestigious American journalism school injured near Kyiv

Two other journalists were injured in an attack that killed an award-winning American documentary filmmaker in Ukraine on 13 March, according to Kyiv region police in Ukraine.

US photojournalist Juan Arredondo, an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School in New York City, described being shot while traveling with a group of foreign journalists through a checkpoint in nearby Irpin while on the way to film refugees fleeing the city during the Russian assault.

“We were across one of the first bridges in Irpin, going to film other refugees leaving, and we got into a car,” he said in a video from an Italian news agency and shared by Ukrainian officials on Sunday.

“Somebody offered to take us to the other bridge and we crossed a checkpoint, and they started shooting at us,” he said. “So the driver turned around, and they kept shooting. There was two of us, my friend Brent Renaud, and he’s been shot and left behind. … I saw he was shot in the neck.”

Another video from a reporter with German newspaper Bild shows Ukrainian medics carrying Mr Arredondo on a stretcher as he held his camera on his chest.

A third victim traveling in the same car was also wounded, according to Kyiv authorities.

Ukrainian officials have blamed Russian forces for the attack near a bridge leading from Irpin into Bucha, which is occupied by Russian troops.

A statement from Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll to CNN said the university does not have “any independent information [about Mr Arredondo’s] injuries at this time but are working now to learn more and to see if we can help.”

Mr Arredondo, like Renaud, was among the 2019 fellows at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.

According to his Instagram, Mr Arredondo recently photographed Ukrainian volunteers cutting cloth to make camouflage nets.

Renaud is believed to be the second journalist killed in Ukraine, after camera operator Yevhenii Sakun was killed on 1 March, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of US journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine. This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law,” the organisation’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said in a statement. “Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account.”

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said his killing is “shocking and horrifying.”

“We’ll be consulting with the Ukrainians to determine how this happened and then to measure and execute appropriate consequences as a result of it,” he told CBS News on Sunday. “I will just say that this is part and parcel of what has been a brazen aggression on the part of the Russians where they have targeted civilians, they have targeted hospitals, they have targeted places of worship and they have targeted journalists.”

Anthony Bellanger, general secretary for the International Federation of Journalists, said the deaths of Brent Renaud and Yevhenii Sakun “cannot go unpunished.”

“The authorities must do everything possible to identify the perpetrators of these war crimes,” he said in a statement.”

“These systematic attacks on journalists and other war crimes require a strong response from the international community,” added European Federations of Journalists general secretary Ricardo Gutierrez.

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