6 hours ago
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Anderson Cooper and his CNN crew were forced to evacuate during a live broadcast from Israel Monday, after air raid sirens signaled an imminent threat in the area.
The network star, 58, was forced to plug the plug on his newscast when sirens began ringing during his conversation with CNN’s chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, and Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond.
As the trio discussed the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, Ward quickly alerted the team that there was danger of escalating conflict behind them.
“I should just say that we’re now hearing an alert,” she said live on air.
Cooper informed the audience that they were alerted to Israeli forces expecting a missile to hit their area in less than 10 minutes, prompting an immediate evacuation.
“So these are these are the alerts that go out on all of our phones when you’re in Israel. It’s a ten-minute warning of incoming missiles or something incoming from Iran,” he said.
“So now the location we’re in has a verbal alarm telling people to go down into bomb shelters. So we have about a ten-minute window to get down into a bomb shelter.”
Cooper, whose voice began to waver as he read aloud the dire warning, asked the crew if it was possible to continue on with the newscast.
“And we’ll continue to try to broadcast from that, that bomb shelter. And even if we can, on the way down,” he said, before asking one crew member to keep filming as they made their way away from the danger zone.
“All right. I think we’re going to head down to the shelters. Chuck, do we have capabilities as we go down?” he asked.
“Just checking your microphones. Be ready in a second,” the crew member responded.
After a brief connection error, the live broadcast returned as the crew headed toward the shelter while air raid sirens continued to blare out.
Cooper continued his conversation with Ward and Diamond, before a loud 90-second alarm, dubbed the “red alert,” went off.
“It is a luxury to have a 10-minute warning,” Cooper remarked.
English (US)