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ISIS-K Attacks Moscow Concert Hall; Catherine, Princess of Wales, Reveals Cancer Diagnosis; Late-Night Senate Vote Averts Partial Government Shutdown; U.S. Warned Russia of Potential ISIS-K Attack. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired March 23, 2024 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ANNA COREN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome, to our viewers watching from around the world. I'm Anna Coren, live from Hong Kong.
Ahead on CNN NEWSROOM --
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COREN (voice-over): Horrifying accounts following a terror attack on a concert venue, just outside Moscow that left dozens dead. And --
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CATHERINE, PRINCESS OF WALES: A test after the operation and cancer had been present.
COREN (voice-over): A heartbreaking diagnosis for the Princess of Wales after weeks of speculation about her health.
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COREN: The death toll from the terror attack on a concert hall near Moscow is now at least 60. ISIS claims responsibility.
Well, this is a live outside -- a live look outside the Crocus City Hall music venue where gunmen opened fire on a crowd, gathered for a concert on Friday. In satellite video from inside the hall, you can hear gunshots and see people trying desperately to get away.
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COREN (voice-over): Over 100 people have been hospitalized. A Russian state media reporter who witnessed the attack says the gunman shot people at point blank range. He also says they threw incendiary bombs. Video shows the venue
engulfed in flames and Moscow's governor talked about firefighters' efforts.
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ANDREY VOROBYOV, MOSCOW REGIONAL GOVERNOR (through translator): It's a tragedy. Here in Crocus, the firefighters are at work. The fire area is very noticeable. All the rest will be told after the firefighters finish their job.
And so ....
COREN (voice-over): Well, the governor later said the fire had been mostly eliminated. Some witnesses say many people leaving the hall were calm.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've, seen wounded. I've seen people lying down when shooting happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I cannot, more than a dozen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We would be in the first corner (ph). It was all far away. We only seem proud (ph) but there was no panic. Everyone walked calmly. Some sat down as they walked out. But there was no panic.
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COREN: CNN's Ivan Watson has covered Russia extensively. He joins us now live from Hong Kong.
Ivan, what more are you learning?
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, this has been a terrifying night. People who were gathering for a music concert, instead, attacked by what eyewitnesses and authorities have described as gunmen seen with long weapons. Let's take a listen to one of the survivors of this terrifying night.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I was sitting in the hall upstairs where the balconies were. We heard gunshots. At first, we didn't understand what had happened. Then I personally saw how the terrorists came in, started shooting everyone.
In the end, they threw a Molotov. Everything was set on fire. We were led to the exit. Turned out the exit was locked. We ran all over Crocus City trying to find an exit but to no avail. We went into the basement of Crocus City Hall and waited for the emergency services and got out. (END VIDEO CLIP)
WATSON: At this point Anna, the authorities have put out the fire, they say and they're dealing with a partially collapsed roof of this enormous concert venue just outside the limits of the city of Moscow itself. There have been desperate calls from city officials for donations of blood.
I mean the numbers of people wounded, at least 145 people hospitalized and descriptions of at least 60 of those people being seriously wounded. We've heard accounts of people looking for missing loved ones who had tried to attend this concert.
The band that was going to perform, Picnic, it says that its members are all healthy, that nobody was hurt. They hadn't gone on stage yet. Their lead singer, a singer named Shaman, he has announced that he's going to pay for the funerals of the 60 some odd people who were killed.
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And for the treatment of the many dozens of other people who were wounded as well. And there were messages up overnight on bulletin boards, electric bulletin boards around Moscow, already commemorating the huge loss of life here.
A final note, ISIS, the Islamic State ,has claimed responsibility for this attack. In a statement put out on an ISIS linked Telegram account with no evidence really to back that up yet -- Anna.
COREN: U.S. officials say that they had warned the Kremlin earlier this month of a potential terror attack and that was then dismissed by Vladimir Putin as, quote, "an attempt to destabilize our society."
I mean, this is a huge embarrassment for the Russian president who could have acted to prevent this tragedy. And we're yet to officially hear from him.
WATSON: We have yet to see the Russian president who, just days ago, was celebrating his reelection to the post of president. And he's resolved -- he's resorted to having a spokesman kind of saying, yes, he's abreast of things and he expresses his condolences for the casualties here.
But yes, as you pointed out, the U.S. embassy in Moscow on March 7th, put out a statement warning U.S. citizens to stay away from large gatherings and even from concert venues, saying that they'd had evidence, intelligence suggesting extremists were preparing to carry out some kind of an attack.
On Tuesday of this week, the Russian president addressed the security service, the FSB, and he dismissed that warning coming from the U.S., calling it a provocation. Listen to what he said on Tuesday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VLADIMIR PUTIN, PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA (through translator): I should also remind you of the recent, to put it bluntly, provocative statements by a number of official Western structures about the possibility of terrorist attacks in Russia.
All this resembles blatant blackmail and an intention to sow fear and destabilize our society.
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WATSON: So we're still waiting for an official Kremlin statement about who might have been behind this deadly attack. And it will be very important to see how the Kremlin will try to frame one of the deadliest incidents that has taken place in Moscow in years.
COREN: Ivan Watson, great to have you on this story. Thanks so much.
Joining me now from Washington is Steve Hall, CNN national security analyst and former CIA chief of Russia operations.
Steve, great to have you with us.
Why would ISIS-K carry out this attack in Russia?
STEVE HALL, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: You know, that's a tough question, Anna, because there are so many different divisions and sects inside of these, of the Islamic State groups.
Mostly, I think there's probably a good degree of just demonstration of the ability of this particular organization to reach out to unexpected places, especially places that are basically police states like Russia.
To be able to carry out -- carry out this kind of horrific attack amidst the number of resources and the amount of time that the Russian security services, specifically the internal service, the FSB, is supposedly putting on these terrorist groups, is quite an accomplishment.
So that's I think one reason is to why they would have chosen Russia to try to carry something like this out.
COREN: The U.S. government had received a warning that a terrorist attack was likely to be carried out. They passed that information on to the Russian government.
How was that received?
HALL: Well, we saw that President Putin basically decided to pooh-pooh the entire thing.
He focused on some of his domestic issues with the so-called elections. Of course, they weren't elections but the process that they went through. Those are politically sensitive times for Putin. He's now passed them. But at the time that the American embassy made public on March 7th the
fact that there was intelligence, that there was there was threat information out there, was just prior to this very sensitive time politically for Putin.
And so he decided to say no, this is all just something that Western governments are making up to try to destabilize the situation in Russia, something that I'm sure today doesn't resonate well with the families of those killed in Moscow today.
COREN: The group but that is claiming responsibility for the attack is ISIS-K -- Khorasan -- it's the Afghan affiliate who was founded in 2015 by disaffected members of the Pakistani Taliban. Please tell us more about it.
HALL: Yes.
Again, it's very hard to keep track of all these different groups.
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Because they splinter, they change their leaderships. Actually their leadership oftentimes gets killed on the battlefield our taken out by governments. So it's oftentimes difficult.
To add more complexity to the situation is that oftentimes local groups -- in this case in Russia, we're looking at in the Caucasus region -- a lot of times local groups will simply say we're going to conduct an operation and then say that we did it in the name of, in this particular case, for example, ISIS-K.
So at this point, at this early stage of these things, as intelligence continues to be collected and as the investigation continues as to who was actually responsible for this and how the planning occurred and, most importantly to me, how it was carried out in the very repressive situation that we have inside of Russia right now.
A lot of that still remains to be seen.
COREN: Talk us through what you are learning about this attack because, from what we understand, the perpetrators managed to flee the scene.
HALL: Yes, it's interesting. If you go back in the chronology, so I think what's becoming more and more clear is that the U.S. government, possibly in connection with other Western intelligence services, collected this information and then did what it was supposed to do, which is forward the information to the Russian government.
The Russian government as we were just discussing elected not to act on it. That was on the 7th.
The information that came out on the 7th of March was that there was a 48-hour window on this but that was a public announcement. It's entirely possible that whoever -- whatever terrorist group was responsible for this got access to that and said we might have to adjust and back it off a little bit in terms of time.
Two weeks later now we have this particular attack and what we have seen is in this very large mall that's just on the outskirts of Moscow, you have all of these casualties apparently shot by men with assault rifles.
The numbers I think are about four right now, as well as incendiary devices, which caused the whole thing to catch fire and then even more casualties resulted.
So again, still early days on this investigation, it's going to be difficult to get from the Russians exactly what happened because it's such a closed society and they control the message so much. But it'll be very interesting to see where things go from here.
COREN: Is there any reason to doubt the claims that ISIS-K, in fact, carried out the attack?
HALL: I'm not sure that there's a real strong reason aside from the fact that, again, it's got to be very difficult to carry out one of these attacks in a place like Russia. That said, we have a number of different sources to include sources inside the U.S. government now who are saying, yes, we had threat information.
We had intelligence indicating that there was going to be some kind of attack. We don't know the specificity of it, because, of course, the intelligence is sensitive. But we do know that the U.S. government and other Western governments seemed to be aware of this.
And importantly passed it along to the Russian government who, instead of acting on it, chose to politicize it and do nothing with it.
COREN: Steve Hall, great to get your insights. Thanks so much for joining us
HALL: Sure.
COREN: Let's now turn, to the other major story. We are following the announcement from Catherine, Princess of Wales, that she's been diagnosed with cancer.
Messages of sympathy and support have been coming in from around the globe since Friday afternoon, when Catherine released a video message about her condition. The princess said she's in the early stages of chemotherapy treatment but did not disclose what kind of cancer she has.
Catherine asked for privacy in the coming weeks as she focuses on returning to full health. Social media has been bursting with sometimes wild conjecture about her and why she's been out the public eye. CNN's Richard Quest, has that story.
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CATHERINE, PRINCESS OF WALES: It has been an incredibly tough couple of months for our entire family. RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE (voice-over): After weeks of speculation, the Princess of Wales dispelled the rumors and gave us the facts.
PRINCESS CATHERINE: In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery, in London. And at the time, it was thought that my condition was non- cancerous. The surgery was successful.
However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present. My medical team, therefore, advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy. And I'm now in the early stages of that treatment.
QUEST (voice-over): Suddenly, so clear why Kate's recovery, after leaving The London Clinic, had taken so long and why she'd avoided the public eye.
PRINCESS CATHERINE: This, of course, came as a huge shock. And William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately, for the sake of our young family.
QUEST (voice-over): The diagnosis is still visibly raw. But CNN understands, the Princess is and has been in good spirits. Kate and Prince William are focusing, on how to explain the diagnosis,
to their young children.
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The three, last seen with their mother, in the now infamous and doctored Mother's Day photo. The many edits, fueling the rumors about the Princess' health, that all seems irrelevant now.
With King Charles, also recovering from cancer, the Princess' PR nightmare came at a delicate time, for the Royal Family. It left William and Queen Camilla, to hold the fort.
Now as she heals, Princess Catherine is asking for privacy and time.
PRINCESS CATHERINE: My work has always brought me a deep sense of joy. And I look forward to being back when I am able. But for now, I must focus on making a full recovery.
QUEST (voice-over): Britain has seemingly rallied, behind its Princess.
Prince (sic) Charles saying he was proud, praising Kate's courage.
And the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, wishing her a speedy recovery, promising the love and support of the entire country.
PRINCESS CATHERINE: I am well and getting stronger every day, by focusing on the things that will help me heal, in my mind, body and spirit.
QUEST (voice-over): And now, the Princess of Wales hopes to be left alone, to focus on her family and her recovery -- Richard Quest, CNN, London.
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COREN: We're joined by CNN's Nada Bashir in London outside Buckingham Palace.
What has been the reaction inside the U.K. to Kate's cancer diagnosis?
NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there has actually been an outpouring of support for the Princess of Wales from the likes of prime minister, the leader of the opposition, other officials across the country.
But this is news which has really touched many across the country who've also been expressing their sympathy and shock for the Princess of Wales. She herself in that video, addressed the message shared with the British public, spoke of the shock that she and her own family had experienced.
She described the last couple of weeks as being quite tough for the family and spoke of needing time to both focus on her recovery but also to ensure that she is able to deliver the news carefully and appropriately to her three young children.
Now we have been hearing from members of the British public who have been sharing their sympathies. Take a listen to what some had to say yesterday.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow, obviously like I'm just completely shocked and it was just crazy that like I was actually like right in front of Buckingham Palace when I found out and it's just -- it's just shocking considering now King Charles was already just diagnosed with cancer.
And it's just -- and then all the like rumors, the speculations about Kate and then, finally, we know what happened. That was just complete shock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Obviously it will be a big disruption to the -- to probably her operations and William's family and William's duties. And, yes, I can imagine it would have a big effect on what they do and how they do it.
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BASHIR: Of course, it has been a shock for the British public to see this is what one of the most senior members of the British royal family. And it comes just weeks after that shock cancer diagnosis for King Charles.
The third we know of course, that the Princess of Wales had undergone where she described as major abdominal surgery back in January. At the time it wasn't believed that she was seeking -- she wouldn't believe that she was undergoing this surgery for a cancerous issue. However, later, doctors did tell the Princess of Wales that they had
found cancer. And so she has now been undertaking the early stages of chemotherapy, according to the Princess of Wales.
But she has assured members of the British public, as she has with her children, she said, that she is hoping to make a full recovery, that she is in good spirits. But of course, the royal family has faced intense media scrutiny over the last few weeks with regard to the Princess of Wales' condition and whereabouts.
She has asked for privacy and for time to focus on both healing and also focus on her family. And the timing of this announcement is, of course, interesting, announcement issued by the Princess of Wales coming, just as her children are set to go on school holidays.
Clearly, an effort there to ensure that her family has as much privacy during this difficult time as they can.
COREN: As you say, speculation and rumors have been swirling now for months about Kate's condition now. We know the truth but those tabloids, the critics, I mean, you'd have to assume they're feeling pretty guilty right now
BASHIR: Absolutely. And there certainly has been a lot of speculation, a lot of disinformation as well, not just in the tabloids but online on social media. this is something which has really captured the attention of many in the United Kingdom and indeed across the globe.
And what has been interesting, of course, in that video message shared by the Princess of Wales is that this is quite an unprecedented step taken by the royal family. We saw that similar message when the king announced his cancer diagnosis.
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But of course, to share such an intimate personal and private matter with the British public are suddenly a big step for senior member of the royal family.
COREN: Nada Bashir in London, many thanks.
Weeks, if not months of speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding the princess' condition are now being replaced with a global outpouring of support. The White House reacted to the terrible news in Friday's press briefing.
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KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Our thoughts are with the Duchess of Cambridge and her family members and friends during this incredibly difficult time. And certainly we wish her a full recovery.
And I think it's important that we respect their privacy, especially at this time. So I'm not going to go further than that.
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COREN: British prime minister Rishi Sunak commended the princess on her, quote, "tremendous bravery," and wishing her a full and speedy recovery on behalf of the country.
French president Emmanuel Macron responded to the news, saying, "Your Highness, in this difficult period, you are going through, Brigitte and I wish you a full recovery. Your strength and resilience inspire us all."
On Instagram, Kate's brother, James Middleton, shared a photo from their childhood and wrote, "Over the years, we have climbed many mountains together. As a family, we will climb this one with you, too."
Her in-laws, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, sent their well-wishes, saying, "We wish health and healing for Kate and the family and hope they are able to do so privately and in peace."
The U.S. has avoided a partial government shutdown after a vote in the Senate, just over an hour ago. But to get to that done, the senators had to do some last minute deal-making that went down to the wire. That's ahead.
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COREN: Political drama was not in short supply in Washington, where a partial U.S. government shutdown was averted just over an hour ago. Well, that's when the Senate passed a package of spending bills to keep the government fully up and running.
The legislation will now be headed to President Biden, who will sign it into law later today, according to a White House official. But as Melanie Zanona reports, it took some last-minute wheeling and dealing in the Senate to get that done.
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MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a deal has been reached to avoid a government shutdown. The House earlier on Friday passed a massive spending package that would fund the remaining six government agencies that have yet to be funded.
And then they sent it over to the Senate. But over in the Senate, it requires cooperation from every single senator in order to be able to move quickly on bills. And Republicans were refusing to give their consent unless they got their desired amendment vote.
So that led to a standoff between Democrats and Republicans for hours. They went back and forth but they finally came to an agreement just minutes before the midnight deadline.
It has been such a tortured process to get to this point because Congress was supposed to have funded the government back in October. But instead they kicked the can down the road. They passed temporary patch after temporary patch.
And they finally released a massive government funding package at 3 in the morning on Thursday, leaving themselves not a whole lot of time to let lawmakers read the bill and get them through both chambers.
So this has been a long and tortured process. There's been a lot of drama over the last few months. But it looks like Congress is finally on track to avoid a government shutdown and put this funding saga behind them -- Melanie Zanona, Capitol Hill, CNN.
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COREN: Donald Trump has until Monday to post nearly a $0.5 billion bond in his civil fraud case as New York prepares to seize his assets. Now the state attorney general's office is rejecting Trump's claims that he can't find an insurance company to cover the $464 million bond.
Prosecutors say Trump should try to get the insurance companies to band together to underwrite the massive bond. Trump's legal team telling the court that he doesn't have enough cash to post the bond. The former president claims in a Truth Social post, he has almost $500 million in cash. But that's for his campaign
The United States says it warned Russia about a possible terrorist attack ahead of Friday's deadly attack that killed at least 60 people. More on that and the warning shared with Americans living in Moscow just ahead.
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COREN: Welcome back.
ISIS is claiming responsibility for the deadly terror attack at a Russian concert hall. At least 60 people have died. In dramatic and disturbing video, you can hear gunshots fired inside that concert venue and see people trying desperately to get away.
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COREN (voice-over): Other video shows the panicked moments when gunmen opened fire inside the crowded auditorium.
And this still image appears to show the people who attacked the venue. Russian state media says they later left the scene in a white Renault (ph).
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COREN: The U.S. says it warned Russia weeks ago about a possible terror attack. Oren Liebermann has more on that from Washington
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OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack according to a statement posted on an ISIS-affiliated news organization. But crucially, they have not provided any sort of evidence to support this claim.
And although it's early in the investigative stages here, it's so soon after the attack itself, we haven't seen the U.S. or Russia weigh in here. Russia of course, announced they were launching a criminal investigation. And the U.S. has been watching this space but no corroboration yet from U.S. officials according two sources familiar with the intelligence.
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The U.S. had seen a steady stream of intelligence since back in November, warning that ISIS Khorasan, otherwise known as ISIS-K, was planning to carry out a large-scale attack within Russia, one that would lead to a mass casualty incident here.
It was fairly specific intelligence according to one of those sources. And the U.S. felt that had a duty to warn here. So some of that intelligence at least was passed on to Russian counterparts and to the Russian government to warn them that an attack like this might be possible.
What was done with that information on the Russian end, that, at least at this point, is incredibly difficult to know. It's also worth noting that on March 7th, the U.S. embassy in Moscow warned U.S. citizens in the country to avoid large gatherings, including concerts, because of the potential for an imminent attack by extremists.
Now we don't know yet if there is a connection between that steady stream of intelligence and that March 7th warning but it is two data points that are worth keeping an eye on.
It's also worth pointing out that that March 7th warning was only for 48 hours and this attack came some two weeks later. Russian president Vladimir Putin dismissed that March 7th warning earlier this week in a speech to the FSB or at least a presentation to the FSB.
He called it provocative and dismissed it outright. So it's difficult to know how seriously the Russians took U.S. warning of a potential attack here. Now the U.S. is still very much looking to see how this plays out and where the intelligence lead. But this is a space the U.S. was watching very closely -- Oren Liebermann, CNN, in Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) COREN: Nearly half a year into the war between Israel and Hamas with no end in sight, nearly 2 million people have been displaced by the fighting. The Palestinian ministry of health says the death toll surpassed 32,000 people on Friday.
And more than 74,000 have been wounded. And while diplomats tell progress toward a ceasefire, nothing concrete has emerged.
U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken met with Israeli leadership on Friday. He said the U.S. is intensely committed to a ceasefire but there's still hard work to be done. And he cautioned Israel's prime minister against a ground offensive in Rafah,
Meanwhile, after vetoing prior U.N. resolutions on Gaza, U.S. saw its own draft resolution rejected by the Security Council on Friday. Russia and China both vetoed each. Yet another resolution is in the works and could be voted on this weekend.
In the West Bank, Israeli troops have used a helicopter to kill a Palestinian man who reportedly opened fire on a vehicle there.
It happened near the illegal settlement of Dolev on Friday. The IDF says its troops chased down the man using drones and a helicopter. Hamas later released a statement, praising the alleged attacker.
A Palestinian news agency says Israeli troops raided his home after the incident.
Still ahead, the Princess of Wales receives a troubling diagnosis. We'll talk to a doctor about what the health providers may have seen following her surgery that had them worried.
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COREN: We're turning now to one of our top stories at this hour, the cancer diagnosis of Catherine, Princess of Wales. A flood of sympathy has been pouring in since Catherine released a video explaining her condition. In her message, the princess said she's begun chemotherapy treatment but didn't say what kind of cancer she has. She asked for privacy and she focuses on returning to full health. It came after weeks of speculation about her and why she's been out of the public eye.
Well, the news of Kate's cancer diagnosis is drawing sympathies and best wishes from Londoners and tourists who see her as more of a mother who needs to recover for her children's sake than a future monarch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So incredibly sad whenever anybody, yes, gets cancer. Horrible thing to hear. And I can only imagine what her family is going through right now. Hope that they can do everything they can for her and she's able to recover.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Expressing some concern happened (INAUDIBLE) naturally devastating. But she's got (INAUDIBLE) because she's a sweetheart.
I would like to wish Kate a speedy recovery because she is a mother. And I don't care what press has done (ph). I don't care that she's royal. The fact is that she's a mother and I want her to get better, so she's there for the children.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hope that that they caught it early enough and that maybe they can find a cure, a cure for her as far as being able to get rid of the cancer. And that she'll have a long life ahead of her because she's really young. So yes.
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COREN: Dr. Owais Durrani is an emergency medicine physician. He joins me now from Houston, Texas.
Owais, thanks so much for joining us. Look, there is so much we don't know and probably never will know.
But as a medical professional what can you ascertain about Kate's condition, knowing what an insidious disease cancer is?
DR. OWAIS DURRANI, EMERGENCY MEDICINE PHYSICIAN: Absolutely, cancer is a very scary word and it's scary to all of us when we hear that. What we know is that she had a surgery and that there was low to no suspicion going into that surgery for cancer.
Now, anytime you have surgery and you have a mass or a cyst or any type of object that is removed from, in this case the abdomen, that is sent to a pathologist and they look at those slides and those cells and see, are there any abnormal cells that we wouldn't expect?
It would appear that in this case there were abnormal cells that were concerning for cancer.
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Which then led to the decision to undergo chemotherapy. So that's basically what we know without speculating too much.
COREN: The princess, as you say, had abdominal surgery back in January. She was in hospital for almost two weeks recovering.
And as you said, it was a result of that surgery that the cancer was detected. I mean, this is quite common to discover cancer this way.
DURRANI: It is and there is no good cancer diagnosis but this would be the ideal way to discover cancer. This is what we call a incidental diagnosis, where you go in to deal with another issue and then you happen to find cancer.
And so that means you find it really, really early. And then that gives you the best shot of making sure that you get the proper treatments to ensure it doesn't spread to other areas and that you prevent future cells from going to other areas.
So it's not ideal to have cancer. But if you're going to find it, it's good to find it early.
COREN: What cancer could this be considering the initial surgery was abdominal?
I realize we are speculating but, as a professional, the surgery was abdominal.
So what cancer could it be?
DURRANI: Yes. So when we say abdomen, that encompasses a wide area. Basically, in lay person terms, everything below the chest. A lot of people will include the pelvic region in that.
So I'll just list some organs. Once again, we're not saying that this is the type of cancer she has. But we have kidneys, liver, bowels or colon, the ovaries, the uterus, the cervix. So all of those organs are in the abdominal area.
So once again, we have no idea which one of those organs it is. But it could be any of those. And there's a lot of vital organs in that area.
COREN: Yes. I think that's a really important point to clear up that it's below the chest, it's not just that the stomach area. Thank you for clarifying.
Kate, as we know, she's 42 years old.
I mean, how common is it for young women in this age group to be diagnosed with cancer?
DURRANI: Yes. So in general, it's not going to be a common diagnosis. But when you look at this age group of females are going to have a higher rate of cancer compared to their male counterparts.
We've also seen this trend over the last couple of years of younger people getting cancer, of getting colorectal cancer, other types to cancer. And to be honest, we don't have an exact answer for why that is.
And so as more information comes out, this is just a wake-up call for all of us to keep a magnifying glass on this issue and to make sure that we meet with our primary care physicians. We don't miss any screenings. And if you feel that anything is off, make sure you talk to your doctor about it.
Because getting it early gives you the best chances of survival and getting, getting back to being a normal human being.
COREN: When you hear that someone is undergoing chemotherapy, I mean, you must immediately associate nausea and hair loss.
What other symptoms are related to chemotherapy and the timeline for these treatments?
DURRANI: Yes. So in terms of timeline, once again, we don't know exactly what type of cancer it is. So it's really going to depend on the type. On the lower end, it could be three months. On average, it's around six months and then some treatments can last up to a year.
What chemotherapy does is it targets the fast replicating cells. So those are cancer cells. But as you mentioned, hair cells are fast replicating. The lining of our stomach and gut is really fast replicating. So that's where you get nausea, vomiting. You also get immune compromised.
So your blood cells and bloodline cells will decrease. And so that's why you may not see someone who's undergoing chemotherapy out in the public, because you want to keep them away from all types of viruses and bacteria out there.
Sometimes you'll also have fatigue and numbness and tingling in your hands and arms. And it really depend on what type of chemotherapy you're going through. And everyone responds differently to the various chemotherapies as well.
COREN: Many of us have loved ones who are fighting this insidious disease.
To have someone with such a high profile go public about her cancer diagnosis, I mean, how important is that?
DURRANI: It's very important. It tells us that no human is immune from cancer. It's a human condition, unfortunately. And the fact that she did go public with it is going to help a lot of people.
It's going to help a lot of people who may have non-specific symptoms or who may have questions to talk to their doctors and possibly catch things early. As you mentioned, I imagine it is much harder for her having to share this with the world.
I see cancer patients coming into the ER all the time and it's a very stressful situation on them, on their family and they're dealing with it in a private manner. And so I think we also have to respect her privacy because she's having to share it with the world. But that's also helping a lot of people as well.
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COREN: Yes, absolutely. She was very brave in going public. Dr. Owais Durrani, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Thank you so much.
DURRANI: Thanks, for. Having me.
COREN: Stay with CNN. We'll be right back.
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COREN: More now on our top stories. ISIS is claiming responsibility for a terror attack in Russia, that's killed at least 60 people. There is stunning and disturbing video of the attack showing gunmen opening fire on a crowd gathered for a concert
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COREN (voice-over): Other video shows people taking cover inside the concert hall when the shots were fired. Russian state media says the gunman left the scene in a white Renault (ph).
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COREN: And well wishes from around the world are pouring in as Catherine, Princess of Wales, reveals that she has been diagnosed with cancer. The mother of three did not disclose her type of cancer but says she is in the early stages of chemotherapy treatment.
After weeks of speculation over her health, the royal is now asking for privacy as she focuses on getting better
Well, thank you so much for your company. I'm Anna Coren in Hong Kong. My colleague Kim Brunhuber has another hour of CNN NEWSROOM. Please stay with us.
