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Sources: Israeli Hostages Nurit Cooper And Yocheved Lifshitz Released; Off-Duty Pilot Subdued After Trying To Take Control Of Plane And Shut Down Engines; U.S. Intel: Iranian-Backed Militias Ready To Ramp Up Attacks Against U.S. Forces In The Middle East. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired October 23, 2023 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:33:44]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: We continue to follow the breaking news in the Israel-Hamas war. The International Committee of the Red Cross now confirming it helped facilitate the release of two more hostages held by Hamas. They are now, we're told, have been transported out of Gaza. Sources tell CNN, officials from Egypt and Qatar also helped with the release.

The hostages, believed to be Israeli citizens, just last week, as you know, two American Israeli hostages were freed.

We want to bring in senior chief global affairs correspondent Matthew Chance, who joins me now. Obviously, for family members, this is fantastic news for the families involved. We're still not releasing the names until we have complete confirmation. There are so many families who are still waiting, watching this, glad that these two are out, wishing their loved ones were out, particularly families of wounded hostages, babies, infants, elderly.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, remember, there's still more than well over 200 hostages that are being held inside the Gaza Strip by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups -- according to the Israeli officials that I've been speaking to. But yes, I mean, obviously this is very, very good news for those two individuals and for their families.

And it does give yet more hope, doesn't it?

[15:35:00]

That, you know, this process, which has been underway for the last couple of weeks, negotiations between the United States through Qatar with Hamas to release some of these people is actually bearing fruit. And it's one of the reasons -- I mean, it's one of the reasons why we think that there's been a kind of pause or a delay in the Israeli ground operation that's been much anticipate. They haven't done it yet. We thought they were going to go in early. They haven't. One of the reasons for that may be that they're giving space for this process to yield more very positive results, you know, like this.

COOPER: The flip side of that, of course, is I mean, Hamas took these people, killing many of their family members. Many of them were wounded. They could release them all now. It is -- they're doing it two by two on the eve almost of every evening, when people think there may be some sort of a ground operation.

CHANCE: Well, I mean yes, they they're using these -- they're using these hostages as cards and they're playing that hand of cards, you know, as best they can. Obviously, they want to avoid, you know, so they can get better prepared. An Israeli ground invasion -- remember, there are tens of thousands of Israeli troops that are poised at the border with Gaza that are going to go in and they're going to go in hard. And you know, they're absolutely determined, those troops, that Hamas is going to be dismantled and is going to be destroyed. That means, you know, thousands of Hamas fighters who are there, who are going to, you know, kind of be in the sights, literally, of the Israeli army. And so it's obviously in the interests of Hamas to try and delay that as long as possible. And so in some ways, they're being very smart. Like this, although very callous.

COOPER: I'm going to go back to Kaitlan Collins with the names of the hostages -- Kaitlan.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, Anderson, obviously, we told you earlier we were being very careful about this reporting, but we have now confirmed this, not just from sources, also, Hamas has released these names and the families of these hostages have now confirmed the names of the two who have been released. Their names are Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz. They are two women. Nurit, I should note, is 79 years old, we believe. Yocheved, we have her age is listed as 85 years old. These are the two hostages that have just been released that the Red Cross has confirmed have made it to that Rafah border crossing and now are on their way inside Israel, where of course they will presumably have medical checkups, those kind of debrief situations.

But Anderson, I mean, even just looking at those ages 79 and 85, just puts into perspective, especially after last week with Natalie Raanan, who is 17 years old, she turns 18 tomorrow, being released. It shows you the scope of the people that Hamas took on October 7th and captured back into Gaza. Ranging from 17 years old to 85 years old. And these are the two hostages who are now going to be able to hopefully be reunited with their families very soon.

COOPER: Yes, we should point out, and they also took, we know of younger people, the 12 year old was taken from near Oz, Aaron Calderon, I believe, Erez Calderon and a number of children, infants or toddlers, at the very least believed as well. Our special live coverage continues after a quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:42:24]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Just in. New details on a major mid-air scare over the weekend. An off duty pilot tried to cut the power on an Alaska airline flight by pulling the emergency fire extinguisher handles while the plane was at cruising altitude. This is coming from a memo that CNN obtained sent to Alaska Air pilots. Now 44-year-old Joseph Emerson is charged with 83 counts of attempted murder, among other offenses. An air traffic control audio recording captured part of the incident, which took place Sunday on a flight from the Seattle area to San Francisco. The flight was diverted to Portland, where it landed safely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PILOT TO AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS: We've got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit, and he doesn't sound like he's causing any issue in the back right now. I think he subdued. Other than that, you know, we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and park.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN safety analyst David Soucie is here with us. He is a former FAA safety inspector. David, first off, just explain this pulling of the fire extinguisher handles, what this would do in a situation like this.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION SAFETY ANALYST: Well, it depends on which ones he pulls, of course. But if he's shutting down the engines on the fire extinguishers in the engines, it can cause the engines to actually shut down as well. Because if you're telling it that there's a fire on board, so you're going to pull those extinguishers. If that's in fact what he did, you can notice that the pilots also say he's trying to shut down the engines, so that might have not have been the only thing he did.

KEILAR: And there's no recovering if you have the extinguisher pulled. I mean, the plane basically becomes like a glider.

SOUCIE: Well, if you pull both, yes. Typically you would only pull one or the other, but this guy sounds like he was trying to shut down whatever he could. So at that point there would not be a lot of recovery at that point other than the glide to the aircraft, which yet they do glide, they still do glide if you have a good landing area ahead of you. But typically in that situation at that altitude, you may not have a lot of options.

KEILAR: Now the pilot on that recording sounds amazingly calm, but I cannot imagine this was a calm moment that was playing out in the cockpit.

SOUCIE: Not in the least, Brianna. If you look at the flight records, you can see that over a period of about two minutes, maybe three, it went from 450 knots down to about 370. The altitude went from 31,000 feet down to about 27,000 feet. So there was 5- or 6,000 feet of altitude that were dropped really quickly. And so, it was a very dramatic thing that they must had a lot of trouble in that cockpit.

[15:45:00]

It's not easy to subdue someone in that in that jump seat area. I've ridden thousands of times in that jump seat and their pilots are very vulnerable to whoever's in that seat. KEILAR: So, you're talking about a struggle. Like a pretty serious

struggle that would have occurred.

SOUCIE: Absolutely. To try to turn back, have one of the pilots -- someone has to keep flying the airplane, obviously. Someone has to maintain what's going on and someone has to turn around and it is behind you. It's way behind you. The jump seat is back there and the jump seat person has access to the center console with the throttles, with the fire extinguishers with basically everything to do with power is right there in front of the jump seater. So that's why they always take so many precautions for who gets to ride in that seat.

KEILAR: But it's not unusual. I mean, right? Normally there's -- frequently you have a pilot who's off duty, who needs to get back to wherever he's riding -- he or she is riding in this seat. Does anything about this indicate to you that this particular pilot maybe plotted this and thought this through?

SOUCIE: You know, I would think that he would. I mean, it doesn't sound like a instantaneous thing that says, gee, I think I'm going to do this. It sounds to me like he plotted to be there where he was and pull those engines, particularly when he did. Which was a -- not a really vulnerable part of the flight. It's not like he did it during takeoff or during landing, which would have certainly resulted in fatalities. But that the altitude that he was at it, there's less chance that there would be fatalities. But it's still to me it sounds like something that he thought about and decided to do. It's not something that just was spontaneously had a mental lapse or something.

KEILAR: You mentioned this loss in altitude and what was shown. Presumably the passengers are aware of this. I mean, what do you think they were experiencing?

SOUCIE: Yes, there was no question something was going wrong, very wrong at the time that this was going on, just by the fact that you can see how quickly the aircraft dropped, the turns that it made and unscheduled and unplanned turns that were made. So there was something going on in the cockpit. And I think the passengers probably knew something was going on, but they didn't know what. Very uncertain time for them.

KEILAR: Yes, thank goodness this ended well. David Soucie, thank you.

SOUCIE: Those pilots I can't believe how calm they were. Thank you.

KEILAR: Unbelievable, I agree. David Soucie, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.

And this just in to CNN. We have images of the two Israeli hostages just released by the terror group Hamas. Their names are Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz. Lifshitz's daughter releasing this statement to the media.

While I cannot put into words the relief that she is now safe. I will remain focused on securing the release of my father and all those, some 200 innocent people who remain hostages in Gaza. We are going to continue to bring you the latest developments on this

story as these details come in. Stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:52:21]

KEILAR: This just in. U.S. officials telling CNN that Iranian backed militias appear ready to ramp up their attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East as Iran seeks to capitalize on the regional backlash over Washington support for Israel. CNN National security reporter Natasha Bertrand is here with us now with details. And Natasha, tell us what you're learning here.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Brianna. So we're told that the U.S. now has specific intelligence that these Iran backed militias across the Middle East, they are intending to ramp up their attacks on U.S. forces across the region. We have already seen that begin on U.S. troops that are stationed in Iraq and Syria as part of the anti-ISIS coalition.

And look, this has happened before. These Iran backed groups they have actively tried to attack U.S. forces with drones and other attacks in recent years. But the U.S. is now obviously very concerned that they are going to be increasing their attacks even further in light of the war between Israel and Hamas, and in light of the increasing anger and the region against the U.S. for supporting Israel in that war.

Now what we're told is that in terms of Iran's role specifically, they do fund and support these militia groups across the region. But their role right now is kind of more as encouragement and less explicitly directing these attacks. What we're told is that they are basically -- and not intervening when these groups have launched these kinds of attacks on U.S. forces and they are not saying that these groups are going to be punished in any way for doing so. So it's kind of tacit encouragement rather than explicit and direct support.

But U.S. officials still hold Iran responsible for all of these attacks that we have been seeing over the course of the last few days. Including one as recently as this morning, when a drone was launched at a U.S. military installation in Syria, and that drone was actually shot down and no forces were injured.

But look, the U.S. is saying, Iran you fund, you support these groups, therefore it is your responsibility to reign them in. And this is exactly why we're seeing this huge force posture increase by the United States in the region. Secretary Austin -- the Secretary of Defense said this weekend that he is sending additional air defense systems to the region, including additional patriot units, which are the sophisticated air defense systems because of the threats that these Iranian backed proxy groups are going to continue to escalate even more than they already have been.

So it's a huge concern right now for the U.S. in terms of protecting troops over there. And it really is all the result, of course, of these escalating tensions in the region that officials say Iran is trying to take advantage of -- Brianna.

KEILAR: And how is this related to those intercepted missiles and drones from Yemen?

[15:55:00]

Because we've learned that actually from CNN reporting there were so many of them and this Navy ship -- this U.S. Navy ship was quite busy for several hours intercepting them.

BERTRAND: Yes, this was -- this was a really major event last week, last Thursday, a U.S. Navy warship that intercepted about 9 missiles. It shot down 14 drones that were launched by -- according to the Pentagon -- these Houthi rebels from Yemen. Of course, that is related because that is an Iran backed group that is yet another Iran back group that is trying to stir up attacks against the U.S. and Israeli targets.

Now according to U.S. officials, they were not trying to target the U.S. specifically with those missiles. They were instead targeting Israel -- which interestingly, they have missiles that can apparently reach that far. But still, the U.S. obviously getting involved here and it risks a potentially even further escalation -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, it certainly does. Natasha, thank you so much for the reporting. We do appreciate it.

And "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts after a quick break.