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WH: 27 Americans Killed, 14 Still Missing After Hamas Attack; IDF: Israel "Conducting Large-Scale Strike" On Targets In Gaza; Daughter Remembers Mother Killed In Hamas Attack; GOP Meeting Ends; Will Meet Again Tonight After Scalise Speaks With Holdouts; UN: 300,000 Plus People Displaced In Gaza. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 12, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:08]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: It is the top of the hour. You're watching CNN NEWS CENTRAL. I'm Boris Sanchez live in Washington, D.C., alongside Anderson Cooper in Israel, with more of our global coverage of the war in the Middle East.

The White House just updated the American death toll from the Hamas terror attack. At least 27 Americans killed, 14 still unaccounted for and less than a handful, as the White House describes it, are believed to be held hostage by Hamas.

We're also now learning that tomorrow, U.S. charter flights out of Israel will begin for Americans seeking to leave the country. Anderson?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: A short time ago, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, here in Tel Aviv, vowing that the U.S. would stand shoulder to shoulder with its ally. He also described the - what he called the overwhelming nature of the atrocities committed by Hamas.

I just spoke to a commander for the Israeli defense forces here. What he told me - here's what he told me about the fight ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: How difficult is this fight going to be on the ground in Gaza? I mean, there have been incursions before. I've been to Gaza City. I know it's a tough place to fight.

REAR ADM. DANIEL AGARI, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES: We will do what we need to do in order to get to this goal that ISIS won't govern Gaza. And if any other country here in the region next to us that hosts Hamas, ISIS, they're risking their own population, but also they need to know if they will interfere, if they will act against us - my grandfather fled away from Germany. We understand completely what we're seeing now. We have no other place to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: I want to go to CNN's Jeremy Diamond in Ashdod, Israel. Also, Ben Wedeman is in southern Lebanon for us right now at this hour.

Jeremy, you've spoken to Israelis as they took shelter today. Obviously, this is something they are used to, particularly in Ashdod and those areas by the Gaza border. What are you seeing now?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, these last couple of hours, Anderson, have been very quiet on the Israeli side. We have not had any red alert sirens in this area for several hours. Instead, the main thing that we are hearing is the rumbling of Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire on the Gaza Strip, very loud, really vibrating the windows at our hotel here more intensely than we have heard in recent nights. Only give us a very small sense of how intense those airstrikes must be for people on the ground there.

But earlier this evening, Anderson, we did have two different barrages of rockets on the city of Ashdod over the course of an hour and a half or so. That second barrage came very close to our hotel. We know that based off of how loud the sound of the Iron Dome intercepting those rockets was and then we saw the plumes of smoke right overhead.

As I was in the shelter on our hotel floor, we spoke with a family that's actually from Ashkelon, which is the city that you can see right behind me that's slightly closer to the Gaza Strip. They left their home because they don't have a bomb shelter inside of their home and their children, the man Yonatan Levy (ph) told me, were so afraid that they simply could not sleep.

And so the hotel manager here has given them five nights free. I asked him later, "What will you do next?" And he said that he's not sure. He is taking it day by day, but he has a brother in another city. And he said that he's gotten an outpouring from Israelis that he knows all across the country, offering him a place to stay.

And that does give you a sense of the psychology in the sense of solidarity and resilience of people here, especially a country after - this country was really shocked by the brutality of those Hamas terror attacks over the weekend.

COOPER: Jeremy, you played some of what Secretary Blinken said today alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As someone who covers the Biden administration, I'm wondering what stood out to you.

DIAMOND: Yes. I mean, the first thing that Secretary Blinken was trying to do was clearly to show that there is absolutely no daylight between the United States and Israel. There is a sense of solidarity here. Part of that is driven certainly by the horror of the images. Another part by the fact that we know that more than two dozen Americans have been killed in these attacks and that there are perhaps as many as 20 or so Americans who are held hostage right now in Gaza as part of those 100 to 150 civilians and soldiers who are believed to be held captive in Gaza.

[15:05:01] But what was also evident was that as he and the Israeli prime minister were repeatedly drawing on the emotions, on the outrage from those attacks by Hamas, what they were also doing was explaining the rationale for what is perhaps a wider military campaign that is to come, a military campaign that will undoubtedly result in more civilian casualties inside of Gaza. That is always the case when Israel goes to attack Hamas inside of that very congested Gaza Strip.

And also, for - from Netanyahu's perspective, preparing the Israeli public for - in the event of a ground invasion, which appears to be likely at this point, if you talk to folks around here, also preparing the Israeli public for the possibility of Israeli military casualties as well.

COOPER: Yes. Jeremy Diamond, thanks.

I want to go to Ben Wedeman.

Ben, on the Gaza side, obviously a worsening humanitarian crisis now in the wake of this attack.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we've heard it described as dire, but dire, Anderson, may be an understatement. You have a health system that is in the process of collapsing. Hospitals apparently are completely overwhelmed. The wounded are simply being put on the ground. There are no beds left. The operating theaters are simply completely congested. And, of course, there's the problem of power.

Power - the Israelis have cut off all electricity. The power - the only power plant in Gaza went out of operation for lack of fuel yesterday afternoon, which basically means all the modern equipment that is used to keep people alive may not be able to run anymore. In fact, the Red Cross put out a statement that the hospitals in Gaza are at risk of becoming a morgue.

And, in fact, it was interesting, our colleague Christiane Amanpour a little while ago spoke to a British surgeon, Ghassan Abu Sitta (ph), who is in Gaza at the moment. I've interviewed Dr. Ghassan many times in Gaza while he's operating on the victims of war. And he is saying that between 30- and 40 percent of the people he is treating in his operating theater are children.

And this really underscores just how many people are caught in the middle of this war who have nothing to do with it. And it always seems, particularly in Gaza, that it's the civilians who pay the highest price.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through interpreter): We are civilians who have no connection to political organizations. We returned here to find that our house had become rubble and the entire area had been destroyed. We have now become homeless and have nothing but the clothes we wear.

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WEDEMAN: And, of course, they do have nowhere to go. There are no bomb shelters in Gaza for ordinary people, even though there are for Hamas. And, of course, at this point, even though the United States and other European countries are talking about setting up a humanitarian corridor to get civilians out of Gaza into Egypt, so far there doesn't seem to be at least any public progress on that front. Anderson?

COOPER: And, Ben, can you just briefly explain why Egypt has been reluctant in the past, certainly, to allow Gaza residents safety in Egypt. They have very real security concerns.

WEDEMAN: Yes, the Egyptians have said that time and time again that their top priority is the national security of Egypt. But, of course, keep in mind the Sinai Peninsula, which, of course, is - very thinly populated. And the Egyptian government controls very tightly who gets out of Gaza and who gets across the Sinai Peninsula.

Certainly, they're in a bit of a political bind. On the one hand, they don't want Palestinians to flood into the Sinai, as we saw, for instance, in January 2008, when Hamas blew up a large section of the wall that separated Gaza from Egypt. And we saw - I saw hundreds of thousands of Gazans flowing out of the Gaza Strip because they just wanted to get out of what has often been described as an open-air prison.

But on the other hand, that Egyptian hesitation has to be balanced against the fact that, increasingly, many people in the Arab and Muslim world are saying, for God's sake, help these people in some way. And certainly, the best way to help many of the civilians in Gaza is to get them out of Gaza, Anderson?

COOPER: Yes, Ben Wedeman, appreciate it. Thank you. We are learning more about the victims of the terror attacks that began Saturday morning at 6.30 AM. Liora Ben Tsur just gave birth to her third child, a daughter named Asif.

[15:10:03]

This is Liora's mom, Marsel, holding her grandchild two days, just two days after this picture was taken. Liora says that Hamas attacked her mother's kibbutz, shot her 14 times.

Liora Ben Tsur joins me now.

Liora, I'm so sorry for your loss and I'm so happy for the birth of your child. How did you learn about your mother's death?

LIORA BEN TSUR, MOTHER KILLED IN HAMAS ATTACK: So, thank you, Anderson. Thank you for giving - that I can say my story here in the television. The first day, I was giving birth for my third child, Asif, in the hospital. The next day, I saw my mother for the last time and I didn't believe that my husband took a picture of my mother with Asif, my little one, for the last time. It was the only picture that I have right now for them together. And then the next day, Saturday, I was hearing, when I was in the hospital, I was hearing the sirens and I was calling my husband and trying to contact him, and he was answering me and told me, don't worry, we are now in the shelter, but I don't know what's going on with your mother.

So, after that, a few hours later, I could not contact my husband, and not contact my children, and not contact my mother. And I thought that they were slaughtered in the kibbutz, because an hour before, we - I get a phone call that we - and a message that we have like 40 terrorists of Hamas inside the kibbutz that is butchering and killing women, children and people and my husband didn't answer me for an hour and a half, and I couldn't know what's going on with my mother, and I was really afraid that I have no family anymore, just me and Asif is left.

So, I was trying to call him, and he didn't answer me for - and then after that, I was calling my brothers and told them, listen, I cannot - I don't know what's going on, and they told me that the army is always getting under attack of terrorists all over the area when they're trying to get inside and help families to save the babies and to save their children. And I - if you can just come and help me, I told my brothers.

So, they came to the kibbutz and they have a few murderers there, and then they got inside my apartment, my house and they found there my husband and my children alive. But my husband told them, listen, I don't know what's going on with my mother, with Liora's mother, so please just go and see if she's fine.

So, they went, they had the guns, they went, of course, to find her. She was staying at the kibbutz, because we had the holiday that's called Simchat Torah, and they wanted to help us, you know ...

COOPER: Yes.

TSUR: ... because I have a little children, I'm just giving birth and they went to the apartment, and then they found her dead. There were 40 bullets inside her body, of Kalashnikov bullets. And you know, she's just 65. She's 65 years old and they found her on the way to my children with candies in her hand.

COOPER: She had candy in her hand.

TSUR: These candies - and there are 40 bullets (inaudible) and she was on her way to my children and my husband, just to help me, because I got my third child. And then after that, my husband called me and he told me in the hospital, when I was holding Asif like now, he told me that my mother were butchered and killed by the terrorists of Hamas. And I heard that a lot of friends of ours is also butchered and killed, women and children and babies. I'm really - I'm sorry.

COOPER: I'm so sorry for your loss. It is unthinkable.

TSUR: Thank you.

COOPER: How is your baby?

TSUR: She's wonderful. She's really - she's a light inside all this.

COOPER: Yes.

TSUR: We're trying to ...

COOPER: She looks beautiful.

TSUR: ... be joyful about what we have - thank you. I'm really grateful that my husband and my children are alive, but - really, my mother, she was a great - she was a wonderful grandma, just 65 years old.

[15:15:00]

COOPER: Well, she must have been so proud of you and the three children in your family that you have built, and I'm so sorry for her loss, and I'm so sorry that she won't be there for the children as they grow, but thank you so much for telling us about her, Liora.

TSUR: Thank you.

COOPER: Liora Ben Tsur, I wish you continued peace and strength in the days ahead.

Stay with CNN. We'll be right back.

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[15:19:43]

SANCHEZ: We're following a lot of breaking news today, including on Capitol Hill, Majority Leader Steve Scalise making his case for the House speakership and members just wrapped a marathon closed-door meeting that sources indicate yielded mixed results. Here's Scalise speaking just moments ago.

[15:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): Obviously, issues have come up over the last week about the whole process of how we get our conference back on track, but then individually people have had questions, and I felt it'd be much better if we did it in full view, where it's not individually, where people don't think that there are side deals going on, where everybody can see, as Republicans talking amongst ourselves, what those issues are.

The good news is our support continues to grow. We're continuing to work to narrow the gap and that's going on, and we're going to continue the meetings.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SANCHEZ: Let's get to Capitol Hill now with CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent, Manu Raju.

So Manu, how are members feeling coming out of that meeting?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Frustrated, lots of frustration, lots of anger among the members here because there just does not seem to be any sign that this dysfunctional moment, this historic moment where the House is completely paralyzed will get - will find any progress to making it unstuck, to moving on key legislation, to try to take steps to avoid a government shutdown, to try to provide aid to Israel, all things that cannot happen without a Speaker of the House. The simple reason why? Steve Scalise does not have the votes yet to become speaker. After the historic vote last week to oust Kevin McCarthy, an unprecedented vote, pushing him out of the speakership, there's been nobody atop this chamber.

Steve Scalise needs 217 votes on the House floor. That means he can only lose four Republican votes. There are more than a dozen, maybe up to two dozen, who have voiced some level of concern or frustration or said they're absolutely a no. And several of them leaving this meeting that lasted two-and-a-half hours told me bluntly that they are still a no.

But right now, Steve Scalise plans to meet behind closed doors with those holdouts to see if there's any progress, and then meet again tonight with the larger Republican conference in an effort to try to pick off those votes one by one. But in talking to several of these members, they are indicating that there is just not much time for Scalise here before they have to decide another option if Scalise can't get the votes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARK GREEN (R-TN): Whoever the nos are and Steve need to get in a room, I just said this in there, those - however number there are, 17, 15, whatever it is, those guys get in a room, they work with Steve. If they can't be reconciled, then, yes, somebody else needs to step up.

RAJU: And at what point will that - how much time are you giving?

GREEN: That should happen in the next 15 minutes, according to me.

RAJU: Are you concerned that this kind of dysfunction could put your seat at risk?

REP. JEN KIGGANS (R-VA): I am. I am. There's, again, work to be done here to get the economy back on track. I mean, the - Israel's at war. I'm concerned about the military. I'm concerned about people from my district who we've sent in harm's way.

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RAJU: And that congressman comes from a swing district in Virginia, but that has actually been echoed by other members from swing districts, including Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska, who just told me moments ago that he is concerned that his seat could be at risk in the next election, and that he is arguing that those individuals, those Republicans who want to tank Steve Scalise's bid will - essentially want to be a Republican minority, not the majority party.

So you're hearing just a lot of frustration, sharp words traded by members, a lot of - against those members who initially pushed out Steve Scalise. And so now a number of other members who initially pushed out Kevin McCarthy and now another - other members who are not willing to elevate Steve Scalise at this moment here.

So just a ton of uncertainty, but this afternoon is so critical for Scalise. Can he flip any of these holdouts in this private meeting? Can he then go back to the Republican conference and say, I'm getting closer to 217 votes and then does he take it to the House floor. All huge questions as the House remains completely paralyzed amid this GOP leadership crisis. Boris?

SANCHEZ: A fraught path ahead for Scalise as speaker.

Manu Raju, thank you so much.

We're also following a fast-evolving situation in Israel, where hundreds of thousands of reservists are now gathering at the border with Gaza. Six days after the Hamas terror attacks on Israel, the White House now says 27 Americans were killed, 14 remain unaccounted for. Joining us now to discuss is retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack.

Gen. Zwack, thank you so much for being with us. The White House has made it clear that recovering Americans being held hostage by Hamas is a key priority. How do you see that playing out?

BRIG. GEN. PETER ZWACK, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, it's extraordinarily complicated because it's likely that most of those Americans or a percentage of them are also Israeli citizens and they're intermingled with the other hostages from a number of countries.

So my instinct is that we need to fall in and support the Israelis while they do the lead effort to work those hostages out.

[15:25:00]

I don't think that it's ripe for negotiation. They can try, but after what Hamas has done, I don't think anybody's in a mood for that.

But the problem is, is that what will happen if Hamas, as they've shown extraordinary ruthless already, they're already so deep into this that they can perpetuate it. What do they do, for example, to start pulling hostages out and shooting them if they're not getting their demands met. And at that point, at what point do you go in with major forces or Israeli special operations or combined special ops, I don't know.

It's devilishly complicated. I believe there's a lot of midnight oil being burned in capitals. And - but what this does do is it - it just continues to show the depravity of Hamas and I think a key angle is to try to, as much as possible, separate Hamas in Gaza from the Palestinian civilians that are caught in the middle of this and are also hostage to this awful situation.

SANCHEZ: I want to expand on that point, General. Is there any potential for humanitarian corridors, ways for those civilians to get out of harm's way? What would your advice be?

ZWACK: Well, my advice would be - and I'm so far away from this - would be, well, you've got to - I know we're talking to the Egyptians and other nations. There would be a hard mission as well, because how do you manage the flow. There will be also a major effort to make sure that any type of outflow, where do the refugees go. Egypt, I don't think, is ready to take on thousands or hundreds of thousands of displaced persons.

This is really hard and I know in the whole discussion about sending food and aid up through those corridors makes eminent sense. But do they - but does it get to the Palestinians who desperately need it in the city or does it go into feed - to feed the Hamas and continue.

I'll make one other point about Hamas.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

ZWACK: So how ruthless and how they purport to be supporting the Palestinians. The fact that even now they're firing rockets out of built-up Gaza shows they have no disregard. They have total disregard for the Palestinian citizens who they are using for cover. And that should be, I don't know, through leaflets or narrative, get out to the populations, to that Palestinian population that is key in all this, a couple million of them.

SANCHEZ: Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack, very much appreciate your time, sir. Thanks for joining us.

ZWACK: Thank you for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Our special coverage of Israel at war continues after a quick break.

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