Veteran foreign CBS News correspondent Holly Williams dove dramatically to the ground after hearing an explosion near Mosul, while Iraqi soldiers, completely unfazed, had a good laugh and took photos of her.
While Williams was in the middle of recording a segment on the battle to take back Mosul from the Islamic State, an explosion hit in the distance, causing her to yelp and quickly get down on all fours and continue news coverage from a crouched position.
One soldier in the background, totally nonplussed by the explosion, brought up his tablet to take a photo and waved for her to get up off the ground.
It’s now the third day since operations have begun to take back Mosul from ISIS, which has held the second-largest city in Iraq for two years since mid-2014. Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. support have surged forward. ISIS in turn has responded by using human shields to repel the invasion.
So far, the fighting is located mainly in the villages on the outskirts of Mosul. There, ISIS has shot mortars and sent trucks full of explosives towards Iraqi troops.
Approximately 25,000 troops, comprised of Iraqis, Kurdish peshmerga soldiers, Shiite militias and other groups are advancing rapidly on the city.
Williams’ CBS News profile states that “we do go to places that are — where there’s kind of an inherent danger because there’s conflict. But, I don’t want to die and I really don’t want any of the people I work with to die. So we’re constantly doing our best to kind of mitigate and avoid actually going anywhere that we might die or be injured.”
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