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Anderson Cooper evacuates Israeli hotel on camera after Iranian missile alarms
Anderson Cooper was forced to evacuate while filming live in Tel Aviv after an alarm warned of an upcoming missile launch from Iran.
In a video "Anderson Cooper 360°" shared on X, the journalist and in-person correspondents evacuated their filming location while broadcasting from a hotel balcony in Israel early Monday, June 23, local time.
"I should just say that we're now hearing an alert," international correspondent Clarissa Ward said matter-of-factly as the alarm was heard on the broadcast, giving them a 10-minute warning to seek shelter.
"So these are the alerts that go out on all of our phones when you're in Israel," Cooper said of the alert. "It's a 10-minute warning of incoming missiles or something incoming from Iran. So now the location we're in has a verbal alarm telling people to go down into bomb shelters."
Ward then asked if they should keep going, with Cooper adding with a chuckle that they "should probably go down." The crew for Cooper's long-running CNN show then prepared to move to shelter, intent on continuing the broadcast in the process. After switching mics and heading through a hotel hallway, Cooper noted it was the first alarm of the day, but something people in the Israeli city had "gotten used to" over the last week and a half.
Taking an elevator to lower ground, Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond went on to describe the damage from previous airstrikes, adding that there hadn't been any Israeli fatalities from Iran's retaliatory fire in about a week.
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The broadcast then went in and out before losing signal completely and switching to CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes.
USA TODAY has reached out to Cooper's representative for comment.
Tensions heightened June 23 over possible payback by Tehran against the U.S. or its allies after strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities amid fears that the Mideast conflict could spiral into a wider war. Israel stepped up airstrikes on Iran, hitting several locations the Israeli defense minister described as "regime targets" in Tehran.
The U.S. remained on alert with its 40,000 troops in the region two days after President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of Fordow, a uranium enrichment facility deep inside a remote mountain in Iran, and facilities at Natanz and Isfahan.
Contributing: Susan Miller and Christopher Cann
