Dramatic moment CNN star Anderson Cooper is forced to urgently evacuate set live on air during missile attack

Anderson Cooper and his CNN team were forced to evacuate live on air while broadcasting from Israel.

Iran launched retaliatory missile attacks against Israel after the United States struck three of their nuclear sites on Sunday. 

They fired off a wave of missiles at Israel that wounded at least 21 people Sunday morning, according to CBS News.

The missiles made impact at four sites in Israel, in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Be’er Yaakov and Nes Ziona.

Cooper was discussing the ongoing conflict with the network’s chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, and Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond, when sirens started to ring early Monday morning. 

‘I should just say that we’re now hearing an alert,’ Ward said as alarms blared in the background. 

Cooper informed the audience that they were all getting an alert saying Israeli forces expected a missile to hit their area in 10 minutes.

‘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,’ Cooper 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.’

The CNN star then asked his crew if it would be possible to continue their broadcast as they evacuated. 

‘And we’ll continue to try to broadcast from that, that bomb shelter. And even if we can, on the way down,’ Cooper said.

He then asked a member of his production crew if they were able to keep broadcasting while fleeing the area. 

‘All right. I think we’re going to head down to the shelters. Chuck, do we have capabilities as we go down?’

‘Just checking your microphones. Be ready in a second,’ the crew member replied. 

Cooper then continued to talk through their evacuation, explaining as the crew walked from their hotel room to the bomb shelter.

While waiting for the elevator, Diamond discussed the damage he witnessed from Iran’s airstrikes in Israel the day before.

The crew’s connection briefly dropped while they were in the elevator, then came back on as Cooper, Ward and Diamond approached the shelter. 

As the pundits continued to talk, a final 90-second alarm sounded, warning residents that it was a ‘red alert’ and to seek safety. 

It was the first Monday morning that an alarm went off in the city, as Cooper remarked: ‘It is a luxury to have a 10-minute warning.’ 

The IDF released a statement on X informing citizens sirens were sounding ‘across central Israel due to a missile launch from Iran.’

A social media account associated with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, published a post portraying missile strikes on a darkened city with a giant skull bearing the Star of David on it. 

‘The punishment continues,’ the post read.