Christiane Amanpour, the reporter with ABC News, filed a report on Wednesday that she was swarmed by protesters in Egypt–similar to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, according to separate reports from TMZ and The Associated Press.
It is widely reported that Cooper claims he was punched in the head while he was in Cairo covering the clash between supporters and protesters of President Hosni Mubarak this week.
“An angry mob surrounded us and chased us into the car shouting that they hate America. They kicked in the car doors and broke our windshield as we drove away,” Amanpour said, according to the TMZ report.
The Associated Press similarly reported that Amanpour said the crowd was getting more and more riled up over the past several days, noting a more aggressive mood.
“You can smell it,” she said, according to the Wednesday AP report. “I just wondered what this was going to bode for the day.”
Groups of protesters surrounded her and her crew, yelling “We hate Americans.” The team quickly got into their vehicle and the crowd rocked and pounded the car roof. The windshield of the car was shattered by a rock, AP reported. Amanpour and her crew were unhurt, unlike Cooper.
Amanpour, who used to work with CNN during her television heyday, was one of the few people to be flown into the embattled North African nation. She interviewed Nobel Peace laureate and democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei in his home.
The TMZ report said that CBS News reporter Katie Couric was also attacked, but the report did not go into detail.
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