CNN’s Anderson Cooper and other network correspondents evacuated to a bomb shelter overnight Sunday while reporting from Tel Aviv amid Israel’s ongoing war with Iran.
“We’re now hearing an alert,” CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward said on air as alarms interrupted her reporting from an Israeli rooftop.
“It’s a 10-minute warning of incoming missiles or something … telling people to go down into bomb shelters,” Cooper informed the television audience. “So we’ll continue to try and broadcast from that bomb shelter.”
“You guys wanna …,” Cooper started, turning to Ward and Jeremy Diamond, the network’s Jerusalem correspondent.
“Should we go down?” Ward interjected.
“We should probably go down,” Cooper nervously chuckled.
“We’re gonna head down to the shelters,” the anchor said before leading the CNN crew with its cameras rolling live as they proceeded quickly to the shelter.
Once they were in the shelter, Ward noted “fewer barrages” coming from Iran in the area but “quite high intensity,” noting extensive damage.
Fighting between Israel and Iran has intensified in recent days as the U.S. carried out military strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.
The bombings sparked each of the major networks to switch into breaking news coverage of the escalating Middle East conflict.