NEED TO KNOW
- Anderson Cooper was forced to evacuate after an alarm warned of an impending missile attack in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Monday, June 23
- The broadcaster was speaking with international correspondent Clarissa Ward and Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond from a studio when the alarm sounded
- Cooper, Ward, and Diamond continued their discussion of the ongoing conflict as they made their way to the shelter
Anderson Cooper had to evacuate during a live broadcast from Tel Aviv, Israel, as a missile alarm warned of an impending attack.
In a video shared on X (formerly known as Twitter), the broadcaster, 58, was forced to evacuate as the missile attack alarm sounded — giving a ten-minute warning of incoming missiles — early in the morning of Monday, June 23.
While speaking to international correspondent Clarissa Ward and Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond about the Middle East conflict, an alarm was suddenly heard on the broadcast.
“I should just say that we’re now hearing an alert,” Ward informed viewers.
Cooper then noted that meant a missile attack was expected in the next 10 minutes.
“So 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 continued.
He went on to note that they would persevere with the broadcast. “And we’ll continue to try to broadcast from that, that bomb shelter. And even if we can, on the way down.”
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“All right. I think we’re going to head down to the shelters. Chuck, do we have capabilities as we go down?,” Cooper asked a member of his crew.
The crew member responded, “Just checking your microphones. Be ready in a second.”
As they made their way to the shelter, Cooper noted that the alarm was the first they’d heard that day.
Meanwhile, Diamond went on to discuss the damage that had been done following previous airstrikes before pointing out, “quite incredibly, we haven’t seen any fatalities [for] I believe a week now.
The broadcast then appeared to lose signal before the video switched to senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes.
The evacuation occurred amid the Trump administration launching a military strike against Iran. The U.S. attack comes after Israel and Iran have been locked in conflict for days, launching a barrage of missiles and drones.
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