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Hamas Rocket Barrage Targets Israeli City. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired October 10, 2023 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:01:55]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: All right, we've been following the breaking news all morning long, seeing rockets flying out of Gaza toward the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

Hamas says it has fired hundreds of rockets into Ashkelon. We saw with our own eyes video of the Israeli Iron Dome intercepting many, if not most, of those rockets.

Let's get right to Clarissa Ward, who is in the Israeli city of Ashkelon to tell us what you have been seeing, Clarissa.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, it has been a very intense hour.

Hamas had warned via its Telegram channel that ordinary residents of the city of Ashkelon should leave by 5:00 p.m. And, literally, like clockwork, at 5:00 p.m., we just heard a massive, sustained, intense barrage of rockets pouring into the city, I should say pounding into the city.

Most of them appear to have been intercepted by the Iron Dome, although we are hearing reports of some places in town where they made direct impact. It was then calm for a few minutes. Then there was another siren, another sustained barrage.

And it basically went on like that, as we were discussing on air, on and off for about 35 minutes, Hamas saying, as you mentioned, that hundreds of rockets were fired at this city. The noise was just extraordinary. And you could see, as you're seeing now, those images of the Iron Dome intercepting scores and scores of rockets, very few people, understandably, out on the streets.

This is a city that has come under frequent rocket attack at the best of times. But, in the last few days, of course, there has been a sustained uptick in the tempo, nothing though, I will say, having been here for a few days now, on the scale of what we just witnessed in that last hour.

Now, I'd like to go to our Nic Robertson, who's in Sderot.

Nic, you're not so far away from me. But tell me. I understand that you, of course, were able to actually hear those rockets as they were being fired off. Tell me what you saw and heard. NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Hi. Hey.

And, Clarissa, I'm just going to sort of wave at the police down here because they have arrived outside the house. They're obviously -- how are you doing, guys? It's all good. CNN up here. CNN.

Yes, just want to make sure they know who we are, because, obviously, they're a bit edgy, because there's a fear of Hamas militants around the town.

Yes, we were -- Clarissa, we were -- we were able to hear and see those missiles taken off on the way to you and see the Iron Dome intercepts that were happening there. And, actually, the thing that's kicking off at the moment -- I don't know if have been able to hear it -- a couple of big detonations here.

There's some pretty heavy howitzers, heavy artillery that is firing into Gaza. The IDF is using that as a -- as you know, a very precise piece of military equipment to try to target the Hamas firing positions because of that -- they'd flagged that they were going to have this barrage of attacks around about 5:00 p.m.

[11:05:13]

So that's also an indication for the IDF that they have got a chance maybe to catch some of those Hamas militants as they're -- as they're firing out the rockets. So we have we have heard that pick up here just around this time.

Yes, it's quite a quite a collection of police outside of here now, but I think they're pretty happy that we're standing on the roof and they know who we are.

WARD: And, Nic, just give me a sense, more broadly speaking, along the Gaza border today with the sort of tempo of what you have been hearing in terms of strikes going in, the mood that you have been seeing in terms of the IDF.

They had said that they were pretty confident that they had cleared all of the Hamas infiltrators. But, certainly, we came upon areas where we were not allowed to pass, because there was still a state of heightened alert that perhaps there still could be a threat.

What have you been seeing?

ROBERTSON: Yes, I think this reflects the same thing.

I think, for the IDF, they have an area that they think they have got control of. And then they get a report that says, hey, something suspicious is happening over here. I don't know why so many police have flooded to this particular neighborhood, but they were outside there searching around with flashlights. So they clearly got word of something.

And I think it's a similar scenario, potentially where you were, that something happened and that something was spotted, and, therefore, the IDF went on -- stepped up their patrols, stepped up their positioning, if you will.

When I spoke to the general in charge, he took us into the kibbutz that's literally about 700 meters away from Gaza that Hamas overran early Saturday morning, was 48 hours of gun battle to get back control of -- I think that's artillery outgoing -- to get back control of this particular kibbutz.

And I said to him: "Look, can you be 100 percent sure that you have got all of these Hamas militants?"

And he said: "No, there is no 100 percent at the moment. We're pretty sure we have got them, we have got them all, but we're not 100 percent sure."

And just half-an-hour ago, we heard small-arms fire behind me here towards the towards the Gaza fence. Again, as you know, small-arms fire means probably a contact, in military parlance. Somebody spotted gunfire, gunfire shots exchanged, contact broken.

I don't know if that was by the fence or what it was. But it shows you that people are on edge. And it shows you that potential still exists. So, that's what we're experiencing here today, from what we have seen.

WARD: We experienced something very similar, Nick. We also were hearing machine gunfire, and, even now, I should say the skies over the city of Ashkelon largely quiet, but I think people bracing themselves for future sustained attacks, for what could be a long night.

I want to throw it back to Kate in New York. But, obviously, we are standing by and we will be watching closely, Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Yes, and we will get right back to you, Clarissa, as it does seem to be setting up for another very long night where you are. Thanks, guys. We will get right back to you.

With us now to talk more and give him more a little more perspective on what exactly we have been seeing play out even just this morning is Major Mike Lyons.

It's good to see you, Major.

So let's talk first about where Clarissa and where Nic are and what we're hearing here. We're talking about Sderot and Ashkelon.

MAJ. MIKE LYONS (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Yes. Yes.

BOLDUAN: Why these areas? Why are they taking fire now?

LYONS: Let's put this through the eyes of Hamas, what they're trying to do.

So what they're trying to do is get as close as possible to that border where they're going to be safe and then fire that artillery. They want to be very close to both these cities, because they want to come under the Iron Dome. They want to survive themselves, right? There are mobile rocket launchers. It's low-tech, but it's high-

volume. That's what they're trying to do. And if they could get as close to that border as possible, they can create the kind of chaos and havoc there, even though, as we saw, though, Iron Dome was able to intercept it.

Now, at the same time, every artillery fire -- every rocket has a return address.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

LYONS: So, Israeli artillery is probably out here someplace. And there, as soon as that thing goes off, now they're firing rocket artillery back in that direction.

We also know there's aircraft standing on by to get them as well. So, again, the Hamas militants are trying to survive, fire off these barrages, and then scoot out of there.

BOLDUAN: The fact that, look, we had thousands of rockets coming from Hamas on Saturday, the fact that they still have rockets to fire now, what does that show?

LYONS: No, it shows that this has been a well-planned operation. And they're looking -- as they're firing here up in Ashkelon, right on the other -- to the north of that is Tel Aviv.

I think they're going to continue -- they're going to continue to use whatever advantage they have, right? They're down here in this place right here. Tel Aviv is probably around here. They -- again, they're confined to Gaza. They have these kinds of systems there. This is -- this just tells me that they have been ready and expecting this fight.

[11:10:00]

BOLDUAN: Another area of I know you have said is a great area of concern, we just are hearing from the IDF putting out on Twitter that sirens are going off in Northern Israel.

This up here, the border with Lebanon, this is a real area of concern. Why?

LYONS: Yes, this is the nightmare scenario for the IDF, because now they have to cut their forces into two -- at two separate places. Hezbollah...

BOLDUAN: And this is talking about not just existentially why this is a concern.

LYONS: Right.

BOLDUAN: This is in the immediate, if they're talking about a ground incursion, why trouble up here is problem for them.

LYONS: Right, because look at the distance here. First of all, only active-duty forces are going to get to that spot.

We know 300,000 are coming. They're not there yet. So they can only use active-duty forces. That's all they have to play with right now. That's number one.

The forces up here, the Hezbollah forces. They have much more capability. They have much more capacity. They can do a lot more things, if they decide to join the war. Now, that's really a game- changer. Now we have the 1973 environment. We have an attack coming from the south, an attack coming from the north.

And then you're going to see enemy locations possibly trying to get this way. Israel is now surrounded on all three sides.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

LYONS: This is what they have to try to stop.

BOLDUAN: Part of the equation when we're talking about Gaza, especially, I wanted to ask you about, when we're talking about, we have got multiple factors here.

LYONS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: You have got the conversation about a ground incursion that could be coming, they could be building up toward, the complicating factor of hostages in Gaza.

And then this is also the complicating factor, the tunnel network that Hamas has in place.

LYONS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: What do you do about this?

LYONS: Yes, so this causes standoff. What I mean by that is, the Israeli forces have to stand by and make sure that they don't get -- these tunnels don't get behind Israeli forces.

That's really what their greatest fear is rear area operations covering where -- those kinds of things are what they're concerned about here. But the hostages, you have to think that -- Israel is pretty good at this. They're good at rescuing hostages. There's 150...

BOLDUAN: They take it very seriously.

LYONS: Absolutely.

And I got to think there's -- special forces, those people have cleared their desks. Every single one is working on a specific single mission. But time's running out, because -- because it just happened a few days ago. They have got to get in there and they have got to start that operation if they know any possibility can get hostages out.

BOLDUAN: Let me pull up this map that I wanted to ask you about, because this shows kind of how the attack, this terror attack from Hamas, really played out.

You have got by sea, by land, by air. You have got the places that were attacked by Hamas fighters.

LYONS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: The IDF now says that it's recovered the bodies of about 1,500 Hamas terrorists inside Israel.

So, on the question of, what's next, I mean, how long does it take? And how long for the IDF to get ready for what is likely could be a ground incursion, when you look at how Hamas did this right under their nose?

LYONS: Yes.

I think it's weeks, because they have to ensure that there's nothing that's trailing. Even if it's ones or twos or whatever the case may be, they got to make sure there's no sleeper cells, or whatever the case may be. I mean, think about it. Every assumption now has got to be run down, OK, because all the assumptions they made about security are out the window, right?

So they have got to really run the traps on every single thing that they think could possibly happen before they start any ground incursion. And that's why it's going to take, I believe, a couple of weeks.

BOLDUAN: When you see also this as for -- how was so much missed?

LYONS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: I mean, this is the million-dollar question, of course.

(CROSSTALK)

LYONS: Yes, you can go back to the same reasons why we missed 9/11, right?

So, 100 things had to go right on the side of Hamas and 100 things went wrong on the side of Israel. And I'm an ops guy, right? So you plan these things. They go out. They -- all they needed was one guy that from an ops perspective to look in the ops, observe, and they could have responded to it.

But they attacked across a wide front. They looked at all the vulnerabilities. It was well-planned. And, frankly, it looks like the Israeli Defense Force just fell asleep. It's unheard of when you think about it, because that's how they project power. They project power in their ability.

BOLDUAN: We -- these are -- I'm just throwing up one of our maps again.

LYONS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: When you know now the threat from Hamas is that they say that they're going to start executing the hostages...

LYONS: Right. Right.

BOLDUAN: ... depending on how Israel, they would say, acts in the coming days, from an ops perspective, from planning, how do you ensure...

LYONS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: What do you need to ensure that you can keep the hostages safe while you're trying to go in and get them in a place where you don't have a lot of visibility?

LYONS: Right.

Yes, and they have to be clear-eyed about the men and women going into rescue,because this is a potential suicide mission for them as well. They know what they're going to be getting into. It's going to be so difficult.

They're going to act on 70, 80 percent intelligence that they already have. And when they get there, it might not be that. They could get trapped themselves. That is the issue here. It is a highly dangerous mission. And when you lay that over 100 hostages or so, it even makes it worse.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

We just put this back up to give some more perspective of, though, where the focus is at the moment.

LYONS: Yes.

BOLDUAN: As the major was saying, the focus is that we have now got concern up here. The IDF says that they have sirens up in the northern part of Israel.

And also, obviously, the focus remains right here where we see all that rocket fire right outside Gaza today.

Major, thanks so much, as always.

LYONS: Thanks.

BOLDUAN: Stick close, please -- John.

BERMAN: All right, that was a terrific discussion.

Again, we have been watching all morning long as rockets have been flying into Ashkelon. We have also seen continued Israeli airstrikes over Gaza.

[11:15:05]

I want to make one thing clear. We have seen this type of thing before, maybe not to this degree, but this type of thing before. What makes what's happening now so unusual, there are 100 to 150 Israeli hostages in Gaza. What will be done to try to get them out alive? What will be done with the 360,000 Israeli reserve troops now being mobilized and heading to the border with Gaza?

Our live special coverage continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:20:09]

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: All morning long, we have been seeing a barrage of rockets coming out of Gaza towards Ashkelon. Most of them have been taken out by the Iron Dome. But some have landed.

We have also been seeing Israel respond and hitting Gaza over and over. And now we are getting word that there are rockets that have been fired from the north, from Lebanon. Israel is now responding with artillery fire, according to the military.

Our Erin Burnett has just arrived in the country. She is in Tel Aviv.

You have been watching this conflict and reporting on this conflict since the very beginning, over the weekend. Let us know what is happening there now in Tel Aviv.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Sara, I mean, even during the day, in the past couple of hours, our teams hear -- sirens would go off. Everyone immediately takes shelter, and then the thuds. Literally, they would hear the thuds.

Now, whether that was actually the Iron Dome intercepting or a rocket actually getting through, an impact, that's not known. But it's very -- over the past couple of hours, that's happened at least three times.

So I think it's fair to describe you're seeing this up and down, as you talk about, from Gaza, all the way up to the north, and obviously all eyes here on what's going to happen tonight. And, as Clarissa said, it's going to be a very long evening, tension, obviously, incredibly high and a very sober country, a country in deep mourning, as well as, obviously, the IDF and all those hundreds of thousands of reservists being called up, as Kate was talking about just a few moments ago.

And all eyes are going to be on what President Biden says, which, of course, is going to be shortly here, as you all know.

Arlette Saenz is at the White House.

And, Arlette, this is going to be a crucial speech watched around the world, watched here, what he is going to say, what he is going to tell, suggest to Israel. What are you hearing?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erin, President Biden is expected to deliver his most fulsome comments yet since this conflict began between Israel and Hamas. And one U.S. official said that the president is not going to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have restraint in this situation. This comes after CNN had previously reported that, when Netanyahu raised the possibility of going and launching a ground operation in Gaza, that the president did not push back on that matter in a previous phone call.

Now, the president is expected to have his third phone call with Netanyahu today. It should be happening before that speech begins. And what the president is also expected to talk about in these remarks is the U.S. support for Israel's ability to defend itself and the assistance that the U.S. and other allies can offer to the country in this moment.

We have heard from President Biden and top officials at the State Department and Department of Defense that the U.S. is prepared to offer further assistance to Israel. They have started surging resources to the country during this conflict.

And another issue that the president is expected to touch on is the fact that there are still many Americans who are unaccounted for due to Hamas taking potentially some American hostages. Now, the White House has not put a number on Americans who could be held hostage, but they said that it is likely that that is a possibility.

The president has outlined that there at least have been 11 Americans killed in this conflict. But in addition to sending some military assistance to Israel, the U.S. is also offering special operations and intelligence planning for a possible rescue effort for these hostages.

Take a listen a bit earlier today to a top National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, and what he had to say about the assistance being offered in this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, NSC COORDINATOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: We have talked to the Israelis about offering them additional intelligence information, as well as hostage recovery expertise. We have a lot of that here in the United States in law enforcement and military intelligence community.

We have offered that assistance to the Israelis. There's a first tranche of military assistance. It's on its way to Israel as we speak, and I suspect that there will be additional tranches of military assistance going forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: And another issue that President Biden could touch on today is something that he said on Saturday, when he urged other actors to not try to take this moment as an opportunity to take advantage of the situation when it's Israel, talking to other potential groups who could be eying similar attacks.

But, for the president, this is a very key diplomatic test for him, as he is now balancing a second war and trying to address not just the needs of Israel, but also the needs of Americans who may still be in the country and those families who have lost loved ones there.

BURNETT: All right, Arlette, and, of course, Americans who are missing, and with all these hostages, no one is certain what the outcome is, and, as every minute goes by, of course, the fear that some of these hostage situations may end horrifically.

There's just so much we don't know right now. We do know, at that festival where many hostages were taken and so many people were killed, there were, of course, people who survived, harrowing tales of chaos that they endured.

[11:25:06]

And Jeremy Diamond talked to one of them. And here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (through translator): How do you think that you came out of this alive?

MICHAL OHANA, SURVIVOR (through translator): I really don't know. It's a miracle. It's a miracle, miracle because people who were next to me did not get out alive.

DIAMOND (voice-over): With a bullet in her leg and shrapnel in her stomach, 27-year-old Michal Ohana considers herself one of the lucky ones.

But when rocket sirens sounded at the Nova music festival in Southern Israel, and Hamas militants began killing and kidnapping hundreds of festival goers, Michal's fate was far from sealed.

OHANA (through translator): It was just shooting range shooting. Whoever that could run ran. And then others got killed.

DIAMOND: After bullets pierced the windows of the car she and her boyfriend were trying to escape in, Michal soon found refuge in a small shed crammed in with at least 50 other people.

OHANA (through translator): There were already people who were injured, some their legs, some of their backside, some on their heads. I had a scarf on me, and somebody next to me was bleeding. So I gave her a tourniquet on her leg.

DIAMOND: Minutes later, shots rang out.

OHANA (through translator): There was silence for a few minutes, and the police woman who was there with us simply screamed. Whoever wanted to be alive needs to leave now. Those who couldn't leave left. Those who couldn't, I don't know what happened with them.

DIAMOND: Michal and her boyfriend took off running, but Michal panicked. As her legs buckled, her boyfriend dragged her across the ground and managed to shove her into the window of a passing vehicle. But at every turn, more Hamas fighters.

OHANA (through translator): They just went with white pickup trucks. On each pickup truck, there were at least 20 terrorists with Kalashnikov grenade guns, shotguns, machine guns. I have never seen anything like this in my life.

DIAMOND: Seemingly encircled, Michal once again jumped out of the car and began running, before finding an abandoned army tank on the side of the road. The bullets reached her there too.

Hiding under the tank, Michal was shot in the leg and shrapnel from a grenade pierced her stomach.

OHANA (through translator): And in that time, we didn't see. We couldn't see anything. And they were taken. Some people were taken.

DIAMOND: For six more hours, Michal lay lying underneath that tank until Israeli soldiers rescued her and evacuated her to Hadassah Hospital, where she was one of more than 60 victims treated.

OHANA: I (INAUDIBLE) and I think I'm going to die.

DIAMOND (on camera): You thought you were going to die?

OHANA: Yes.

DIAMOND (voice-over): Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNETT: And Amir Ben Natan joins me now. He was there at the festival and managed to flee and escape.

Amir, I'm really grateful that you're with us. And I just want to start off first by saying we're glad that you're OK. Have you been able to account for your friends, for other people that you knew who were there? Do you know where everybody is now?

AMIR BEN NATAN, SURVIVOR: Yes.

Luckily, my friends are also OK, yes. Like, people I know personally, no one died.

BURNETT: I know -- Amir, I know that, when that when it started, when you got the first alerts, the music sort of stopped.

NATAN: Yes.

BURNETT: And then they said, oh, there's rockets coming from Gaza. And at first, you said, well, this is, sadly, normal and thought that things would just continue.

At what point did you realize that something was terribly wrong?

NATAN: And so after, like, they stopped the music, we went out. And there was a big line of cars. We waited that the cars would move a bit. And then we went inside the cars about 30 minutes later.

And after a few minutes, people started to run, but still everything was unclear. So, I asked if anyone knows what's going on, but no one knew, so came back to the car. And this repeated one more time. We were going out of the car, ran, and came back to the car, but, for the first time, we realized that something serious is going on.

And then I started to run, like, all my power. And, actually, from this point, I was...

(CROSSTALK)

BURNETT: And I know...

(SIRENS BLARING)

WARD: Come to us. Come to us.

BURNETT: All right, Amir, stand by for one moment.

I want to go to Clarissa Ward.