What It’s Like To Cover a Rocket Attack

By Alex Weprin 

Al Jazeera English camera operator Bradley McLennan gives a first-person look at covering a rocket attack. McLennan and correspondent Hoda Abdel-Hamid were in the town of Ashkelon in southern Israel when the sirens sounded, a signal that rockets had been fired from Gaza. There may be a cease-fire at the moment, but the report still resonates.

It makes for great television correspondent taking cover but when you are actually in that situation, it’s very worrying.

Some of the preventative measures I put in place on Monday included purposely positioning ourselves in an open area, away from buildings so that we could clearly see the rockets being fired in the air, and also to limit the amount of shrapnel caused by breaking glass in the event the rocket hit something close by…

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When I thought it was safe to come back to the camera, I framed up the intercepts from the Iron Dome system in the sky and, once we knew the red alert was over, I came back to Hoda and continued the live.

Video of the very compelling report in question is after the jump.

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