 On July 25, as North Korean forces seized the town of Yongdong, 7 miles (11 km) west of No Gun Ri, U.S. troops were evacuating nearby villages, including hundreds of residents of Chu Gok Ri and Im Ke Ri. These villagers were joined by others as they walked down the main road south, and the estimated 600 refugees spent the night by a riverbank near Ha Ga Ri village, 3.5 miles (5.5 km) west of No Gun Ri. Seven refugees were killed by U.S. soldiers when they strayed from the group during the night. In the morning of July 26, the villagers found that the escorting soldiers had left. They continued down the road, were stopped by American troops at a roadblock near No Gun Ri, and were ordered onto the parallel railroad tracks, where U.S. soldiers searched them and their belongings, confiscating knives and other items. The refugees were resting, spread out along the railroad embankment around midday, when military aircraft strafed and bombed them. Recalling the air strike, Yang Hae-chan, a 10-year-old boy in 1950, said that the attacking planes returned repeatedly, and "chaos broke out among the refugees. We ran around wildly trying to get away." He and another survivor said that soldiers reappeared and began shooting the wounded on the tracks. Survivors first sought shelter in a small culvert beneath the tracks, but soldiers and U.S. ground fire drove them from there into a double tunnel beneath a concrete railroad bridge. Inside the bridge underpasses (each 80 feet long, 22 feet wide and 40 feet high), they came under heavy machine gun and rifle fire from 7th Cavalry troops from both sides of the bridge. "Children were screaming in fear and adults were praying for their lives, and the whole time they never stopped shooting," said survivor Park Sun-yong, whose 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter were killed, while she was badly wounded.
