CNN anchor Anderson Cooper was forced to flee to a bomb shelter after receiving a warning of an incoming missile from Iran during a live broadcast in Israel early on Monday.
Speaking in the wake of President Trump’s decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities, Cooper, 58, was discussing the escalating conflict with Clarissa Ward, the network’s chief international correspondent, and Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond, from the balcony of their Tel Aviv hotel room at 3 a.m. local time.
Their cell phones then started blaring a warning sound. “I should just say that we’re now hearing an alert,” Ward said on air.
“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,” Cooper explained.
“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.”
Ward asked if they should finish the broadcast first, before evacuating. Cooper wrly laughed and said: “We should go.”
“And we’ll continue to try to broadcast from that, that bomb shelter. And even if we can, on the way down,” he said to the camera.
The trio were able to continue the broadcast, despite minor signal issues, as they made their way to the underground shelter with other hotel guests.
“It is a luxury to have a 10-minute warning,” Cooper said at one point. In a selfie video shared on X, Cooper later showed the “red alert” warning that rings out around 90 seconds before impact.
On Sunday, Iran responded to U.S. strikes on its nuclear facilities by sending more than 40 missiles toward Israel. An Iranian military spokesperson on Monday called Trump a “gambler” and warned: “You may start this war, but we will be the ones to finish it.”
Tel Aviv was struck in the attacks Sunday, but few were injured as many people had made it to bomb shelters in time. Deputy Mayor Haim Goren said it was “miraculous” that more people were not hurt. Millions sought shelter as Iran continued its attacks early Monday, according to The Times of Israel, with the newspaper reporting a power outage relating to one impact but not new injuries.
Strikes have damaged 240 residential buildings in Tel Aviv since the tit-for-tat bombing started earlier this month.
