WATCH: MSNBC’s Richard Engel Quickly Helmets Up as Gunfire Erupts During Chaotic West Bank Live Shot
NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel had to quickly don a helmet when gunfire erupted during a chaotic live shot from the West Bank Tuesday morning.
On Stephanie Ruhle Reports, host Stephanie Ruhle tossed to Engel for a live report on the ongoing violence between Israel and the Palestinians, and the chaos perfectly illustrated the difficulty of Engel’s assignment. As he began to update Ruhle on the situation, all hell broke loose around him — but it was hell that was difficult to identify.
As Engel began to explain that he was among Palestinians protesting on the outskirts of Ramallah, loud pops began exploding around him, and he tried to fill Ruhle in on what was happening.
“There is a drone up in the sky, it is an Israeli drone, and that drone is either taking photographs of us, or it could drop tear gas,” Engel said. “It is something that the Israelis do quite a bit, instead of launching tear gas, they will fly a drone and then drop it into the crowds. It sounds like the Palestinians are trying to fire fireworks to disrupt or confuse the drone.”
Then, people started running past Engel, and he remarked that while it was “all just fireworks for now, it might inspire the Israelis to fire a vollley of tear gas.”
Engel returned, briefly, to describing the state of play in the conflict, but more explosions interrupted him.
“It’s like the 4th of July all of a sudden,” Engel said.
“Richard, do you feel safe where you are? It doesn’t look safe,” Ruhle asked.
“These situations are fluid. I’ve covered a lot of these kind of demonstrations and you come prepared, you have a helmet and gas mask and you are always keeping your eyes open,” Engel said, as gunfire could be heard.
“The biggest thing you want to you want to be concerned about is live ammunition. That is what you really want to be afraid of,” Engel said as crowds of Palestinians ran past him and the gunfire escalated.
“Those cracks could potentially be that,” Engel said. “Now on the hill the Israelis are taking cover, they are pulling back, so it could very well be that someone, not sure where, is firing live ammunition. That would be a significant escalation.”
As he donned his helmet and began to hurry away, Engel added: “The Israelis respond very aggressively when they are fired on with live ammunition. So we are moving back.”
“You can see the Palestinians are celebrating because whatever that was, those crackles in the distance, that sounded like it could have been live ammunition, got those Israelis on the hillside, the ones who have been flying that drone and throwing in the tear gas, it got them to take copper behind the hill,” Engel reported.
Watch above via MSNBC.
