A photojournalist who captured a horrifying photo of a family killed in Ukraine said she witnessed a 'war crime'

• The photojournalist who took a devastating photo of a dead family in Ukraine said she witnessed a war crime.
• Lynsey Addario's photo ran on the NYT front page on Monday, capturing the grisly reality of Ukraine.

The photojournalist who witnessed a mother and children being killed by a mortar in northern Ukraine called the incident a "war crime," CBS News reported Tuesday.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning photojournalist Lynsey Addario took the horrifying photo of the family lying dead in Irpin, a city about 30 miles northwest of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. The photo ran on the front page of The New York Times on Monday.

In an interview with "CBS Evening News" host Norah O'Donnell, Addario described the scene leading up to the shocking image that painted the reality of the Russian attack on Ukraine.

"I went forward and found a place sort of behind a wall and started photographing," Addario told O'Donnell. "And in fact, within minutes, a series of mortars fell increasingly closer and closer to our position until one landed about 30 feet from where I was standing and it killed a mother and her two children."

In the moment, she said she was "shaken up" because she had been sprayed with gravel from the mortar round "that could have killed us very easily." Nonetheless, she said she tried to "stay very focused" and keep "the camera to my eye."

As Addario was running to safety following the blast, she saw the family that was killed and thought of her own children.

"When we were told that we could run across the street by our security adviser, I ran, and I saw this family splayed out and I saw these little moon boots and puffy coat, and I just thought of my own children," she said.

The photographer said she acknowledged that it could be disrespectful to take a photo of the family, but she felt she was obligated to document the moment, given that she was in a civilian area at the time and believed that the attack was intentional.

"I thought it's disrespectful to take a photo, but I have to take a photo," she said. "This is a war crime."

"I think it's really important that people around the world see these images," she added. "It's really brave of The New York Times to put that image on the front page. It's a difficult image, but it is a historically important image."