ABC's Woodruff, Cameraman Injured in Iraq
Published
ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and a cameraman were seriously injured Sunday in an attack and explosion while reporting from Iraq.
The two journalists were traveling with U.S. and Iraqi troops near Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad, when an improvised explosive device went off, ABC News President David Westin said. Both suffered serious injuries and were taken into surgery at a U.S. military hospital in the area, the network said.
Both Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were wearing body armor and helmets, the network said. The two had embedded with the 4th Infantry Division and traveling with an Iraqi Army unit. The U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad confirmed that the ABC News team was involved in an attack but declined to provide further details to The Associated Press. An official military statement was expected to be issued later Sunday.
Woodruff, 44, was named co-anchor of ABC News' "World News Tonight" with Elizabeth Vargas earlier this month after the death of Peter Jennings. In an unusual approach to evening news shows, one of the two co-anchors typically reports from the studio in New York while the other reports from the field, as Woodruff was doing in Iraq.
Last week, he spent three days in Israel reporting on the outcome of the Palestinian elections. He was to have been in Iraq through the State of the Union address on Tuesday, according to ABC. Woodruff, a father of four, grew up in Michigan and became a corporate lawyer in New York. He took a leave of absence to teach at a school in China, helped CBS News during the Tiananmen Square uprising and became hooked on journalism.
He has since covered the Justice Department and reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Belgrade and Kosovo.
"When I realized there was a job that existed in this world where I could be in the middle of huge world events and actually get paid for it, it was an epiphany for me," Woodruff told the AP in a recent interview.