![]() ![]() "He's kept bits of shrapnel and pieces of the aircraft itself," he says. ![]() Among the more unusual level of things he saw? A small museum dedicated to the 1986 American airstrike on his compound. He also spent a considerable amount of time at Moammar Gadhafi's former compound, which has become a Libyan tourist attraction in recent weeks. While reporting on the front lines, Engel repeatedly crisscrossed the country in a car with his cameraman. Gadhafi's Home: 'Not Particularly Attractive, Bad Kitsch' He heard the whistle and turned to it and catches the smoke as it explodes." He ran to a concrete barrier and crouched behind it, while his cameraman kept filming. (He scuba dives.) He also discusses his reporting of the uprisings in Egypt and Libya, where he narrowly avoided an artillery fire attack while interviewing a rebel last March.Īfghanistan Dexter Filkins: Afghanistan's 'Make Or Break' TimeĮngel says he then looked for anything hard to stand behind, to shield himself from the blast. On today's Fresh Air, Engel talks about covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and his ways of dealing with long-term stress. ![]() 11 attacks and how the cost of war has affected both soldiers and those back home. The documentary examines America's response to the Sept. So why are they fighting all these little fights in remote valleys that the soldiers have never heard of? I think some of the soldiers come back and the answer is: They don't know why."Įngel's report from the Afghan base is included in Day of Destruction - Decade of War, a new MSNBC documentary Engel co-hosts with MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow. And I've seen battles like this on little outposts in other parts of Afghanistan and when you add them up, 'Why? What are these amounting to?' And when I was talking to soldiers about this, they say, 'We're supposedly here to help the Afghan people but sometimes the Afghans don't want the Americans help.'. "They're attacked and they fire back and they fight ferociously for about 30 minutes or so and three soldiers are badly injured in this firefight. "I've seen a lot of battles like this," he says. Then the other sound which was a very distinct whistle and I just wanted to get down low so I dropped onto my stomach. They got right up to the outskirts - maybe 5 meters, 10 meters from the walls."Īnd the attack, said Engel, was not unusual. "If the Taliban would have gotten inside the base and probably tried to kill everybody inside," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. Engel continued reporting as the battle raged just yards outside of the base's wall. The troops were returning from a memorial service located off-base when the Taliban attacked their compound. While on an assignment in Afghanistan in 2010, Engel spent several weeks embedded with soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division. It wasn't the first time Engel has had a close call. He has filed from Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan - and more recently covered the uprisings in Egypt, where he was tear gassed, and Libya, where he was almost shot in Benghazi while covering the conflict. ![]() Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, has spent the past decade going to some of the more dangerous war zones on the planet. Richard Engel is NBC News' chief foreign correspondent. ![]()
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