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An American volunteer in Ukraine said he was at a Kramatorsk restaurant when it was hit by a Russian missile on Tuesday evening.
Nick Duckworth, 28, from Sonora, California, said he arrived at the Ria Lounge restaurant with colleagues around 20 minutes before the missile attack, which took place just after 7.30 p.m. local time.
“I can remember trying to tell my team to get down but failing before it hit,” Duckworth said in messages exchanged with CNN.
“Once they moved, I ran to help a translator for a journalist team who had severe injuries. Once a more qualified medical professional reached her and our team’s paramedic arrived on scene, I ran into the restaurant to start assessing where help was needed most – which included trying to reach a girl pinned by the roof and a pillar. As well as starting to help move debris where others were pinned but in more stable conditions,” he continued.
Duckworth said there was a children’s party at the restaurant. “There was a kids’ party, a lot of other humanitarian workers, and journalists. Very few actual military personnel were in the area in comparison to the mass amount of civilians.”
His group had almost ended up sitting inside the restaurant, where the full impact of the strike was felt, except a server managed to find them a table outside at the last minute. He said this likely saved his life.
“The only table open inside would have been buried under the rubble,” Duckworth said.
He and his colleagues, including British volunteer Mo Hornik, escaped with only minor injuries and posted pictures on Facebook from the scene and inside the hospital.
Duckworth said he had been in Ukraine for around 14 months working for a humanitarian charity delivering aid to civilians in frontline villages. He has posted frequently on Facebook about delivering medical supplies and other provisions to frontline areas in eastern Ukraine.
“We are only more united and motivated to continue our work through this act of terror,” Duckworth wrote in a post on Facebook.
CNN has reached out to the US State Department for comment.
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