We reported yesterday to you that CNN’s resident 43 year old silver fox and possible friend of Dorothy, Anderson Cooper was the victim of an angry pro-Mubarak mob attack in Cairo, Egypt on Wednesday . The 43 year-old journalist gave a run down of the frightening incident on CNN’s American Morning today. Poor Coopy.
“The crowd kept growing and throwing more punches and kicks and trying to grab us,” said Cooper.
“It was pandemonium,” he went on. “There was no control to it. Suddenly, a young man would look at you, and then punch you right in the face. The instinct is to try to punch or push back, but you really can’t in a situation like that. That inflames the crowd even more. All we could do was walk as quickly as possible and stay together and seek a safe location.”
And CNN’s crew found a safe location on the roof of a building near Tahrir Square. Anderson explains the crew was trying to reach a neutral location, where they could do their job, when they were stopped by President Hosni Mubarak’s supporters, who clearly did not want the cameras to capture the moment.
“We were trying to make our way to the no man land,” he said, referring to a neutral location between the opposing groups. “We never made it that far. We were set upon by pro-Muburak supporters punching us in the face.”
He said one attacker “tried to break his [cameraman's] camera… they didn’t want any pictures taken. Frankly, we weren’t even taking pictures with the big camera. I was using a Flip camera, which they didn’t notice.”
“But the big camera – they were trying to grab it. We immediately started to turn around because we realized the situation would get very bad very quickly.”
Like any respectable reporter in this modern era he took to his Twitter regarding the violent confrontation in Egypt:
“Got roughed up by thugs in pro-mubarak crowd..punched and kicked repeatedly. Had to escape. Safe now. Its getting really bad in front of egyptian museum.”
“Thanks for tweets of concern..I’m sore and head hurts but fine. Neil and mary anne are bruised but ok too. Thanks. Covering ongoing #egypt violence, and editing video Neil and I shot of the attack on us.”
