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Israel Conducts Extensive Airstrikes on Gaza Strip. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired October 27, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: And we mean it so much that this is on the Muslim Sabbath and the Jewish Sabbath.

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, and just like -- just like we're debating, what does this mean right now, you can bet that there are Hamas terrorists inside of those tunnels thinking, what are they going to do next?

So, Israel has acted. They have hit decisively with a lot of strikes tonight. What's going to happen next is as important to them as it is -- as we debate it as well.

BASH: General Hertling, thank you so much.

Thanks to Nic and Jeremy.

We are obviously going to continue watching this.

"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" picks up right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're following breaking news out of the Middle East.

I'm Boris Sanchez, with Brianna Keilar here in Washington, D.C.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We're seeing some live pictures now out of Gaza, where we have been watching explosions lighting up the sky.

We do want to bring in now CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper, who are live for us in Tel Aviv.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Yes, we are seeing an intensification of explosions over and in the Gaza Strip, more than we have seen in recent days.

The IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, have not commented on what seems to be a definite uptick in military activity. They're not commenting on whether there has been officially any sort of scaling up of their operations targeting Hamas.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: This also comes on a day where we had been learning more about hostage negotiations with Hamas, as well as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza growing more dire by the day.

Jake, there had been a lot of anticipation about a potential breakthrough of sorts in the hostage crisis. That obviously is now being overshadowed by this. We don't know what the developments are on the hostage front.

TAPPER: This would seem to suggest that it's not going as desired.

I mean, you wouldn't have an intensification of the bombing campaign, one would think, if they were about to release a bunch of hostages.

COOPER: And, certainly, the level of explosions that we have been hearing, even in Tel Aviv here, feeling some of the impacts of those explosions all the way in Gaza.

Nic Robertson is standing by in Sderot for us.

Nic, talk about what you have been hearing, when this uptick began.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, it began about three hours ago. It's been heavy through the afternoon, but it really began about three hours ago, I would say, heavy artillery fire and missile strikes going into Gaza.

There are a couple of artillery batteries not far away from where we are, and they were both sending repeat heavy round after round after round. You could hear the -- you could hear the guns firing. You could hear the detonations behind us.

And then, after that, there were -- the tank fire started up, tanks from positions close to here that we haven't heard before, a lot of tank fire really sustained from a number of different tanks. And during that time, a huge wall of smoke came up from Gaza, carried on the wind through the area where we are here.

You could taste it. You could smell it. And it was a sort of smoke that the military would use to maneuver hidden from the enemy. So we don't know if this was smoke being used for an incursion. We don't know if those tanks were being used for an incursion.

What we do know is, when we have stood here on the recent nights and we have seen tank fire, it means we find out the day after from the IDF that there has been an incursion. There were the hallmarks here of a potential incursion. But from where we have been, it is the tanks and the artillery pieces and the small arms that have been doing the talking, perhaps drowning out the negotiations going on in Doha, perhaps adding emphasis to Israel's position.

But, as we know, Hamas has also responded by firing its rockets into Tel Aviv, where you are. So, is what we're seeing on the battlefield an amplification of positions held at those talks to create more pressure, or is it the breakdown in talks?

But what we're witnessing here is a definitive uptick in tensions, in artillery fire, in tank fire. Where it goes after tonight, what it means going forward is not clear as we stand here. But, definitely, it's the guns doing the talking tonight -- Anderson, Jake.

COOPER: And, Nic, there had been a report about kind of a large amount of smoke that had kind of drifted across into Southern Israel.

Is that something you witnessed? And what is that?

ROBERTSON: Very hard to tell.

I was talking with an IDF spokesperson while literally engulfed in that smoke and asking them what was going on. The IDF doesn't comment, as you know, in real time about operations. And they said they'd have to get back to me about what it was.

We saw fires on the hillside here last night caused by flares that had been fired up, come down, hit the long grass, set the grass afire. That was not what we experienced tonight. We experienced a huge wall of smoke that literally grew up into the sky. It was just the dust. It was these dark clouds billowing up high.

[13:05:16]

You could see it moving up and up and up. And then we realized it was actually coming towards us. And, as you see behind me, there are buildings. There are streetlights here on the edge of town. And we could literally see that smoke engulf those buildings and blow past the streetlights here onto the position we were in, and then fill the sky behind where John (ph), our cameraman, is standing right now.

So it was a dense smoke. It was slightly acrid to the throat. It tingled in the nose. It wasn't the sort of smoke that gets fired, tear gas. It wasn't that sort of thing. But it was this dense smoke that just enveloped the surroundings, the sort of thing that is perhaps called in military terms a smokescreen for troops to maneuver under.

We don't know if that's what was happening. We certainly know tanks that are mobile were firing in that area at that time.

TAPPER: And, Nic, it's easy to forget because Israel has this incredibly effective missile defense system, the Iron Dome.

But since October 7, Palestinian groups, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and others, have just been blanketing Israel, attempting to blanket Israel with rockets of their own, roughly 15,000 rockets that they have. And they have been largely destroyed by the Iron Dome.

If it weren't for Iron Dome, I mean, the Israeli casualties would be in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands. It seems today in Tel Aviv, because of the alerts, it seems like there was an increase in Palestinian attacks on Tel Aviv.

And, anecdotally, just because of the app that they have for Israelis in terms of the red alerts in different neighborhoods, different areas of Israel, it seemed, anecdotally, that there was an increase in Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel. What was your impression in Sderot, which, for people not watching, is much closer to Gaza -- I mean, people not familiar with Israeli geography and Gazan geography? ROBERTSON: Yes.

TAPPER: Was that your impression as well?

ROBERTSON: It absolutely was.

And, like you, Jake, we were watching and listening to those apps, and it was ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping as another area lit up in Central Israel, where you are, in a whole area around Tel Aviv, that central area.

Not so many rockets here on our location today. What I can tell you specifically from here -- perhaps it's anecdotal, but we know from our experience here, when you take out the Iron Dome from the equation -- and we understood that's what happened here temporarily -- the missiles hit. They hit the building next door to us. They hit a number of other locations here in this town.

Iron Dome is absolutely essential, but Hamas knows that, Islamic Jihad knows that, and they will have over the past few weeks tried to analyze when their missiles get through. What pattern of missiles? How many do you fire in which direction? How many do you fire in a slightly different direction? How soon after?

They try to create patterns that will defeat the ability of the Iron Dome. The Iron Dome is a very intelligent computerized system that detects the incoming missiles, knows which battery to fire against them. But when the batteries fired those rounds, it still needs to reload.

So, Hamas will have studied this to try to find the weak points, and perhaps that's what we were witnessing this evening. Certainly, when I saw all those lights light up on the app and hear the pings, that was a sense it created to me, Jake.

TAPPER: Yes, and it seems to -- Anderson, they seem -- they don't seem to be targeting military targets.

COOPER: Right.

TAPPER: I mean, it seems to be focused on population centers in Israel.

COOPER: They don't have the targeting capabilities to pinpoint...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Right. But they're just trying to hit downtown Tel Aviv.

COOPER: Right.

And, as Jake was saying, today in Tel Aviv, there were more air raid sirens and certainly...

TAPPER: At least three or four, yes.

COOPER: ... yes, than I have heard in quite some time.

Jeremy Diamond is also with us. He is in Ashkelon, also very close to the border.

TAPPER: That's just north of Gaza, I think, on the -- right on the Mediterranean Ocean.

COOPER: Jeremy, talk about what you have been hearing over the last several hours and seeing.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, we have been hearing really the most intense, the most sustained bombing of Gaza that I think I have heard probably in the nearly three weeks that I have been in this area. The sound, the loudness of these booms has really been unlike anything I have heard in these last several weeks.

[13:10:01]

And amid all of this, what we have also heard is rocket fire coming from Gaza towards right here in Ashkelon. We had a siren go off about an hour ago, as well as earlier in the day. And we also had rockets, as you guys know, over in Tel Aviv and in Central Israel as well.

All of this points to an intensification of this Israeli campaign. Whether or not this is the beginning of Israel's planned ground invasion of Gaza is yet to be confirmed. But what we are hearing is also that, inside of Gaza, that they are getting the sense that this is indeed the most intense bombing that they have had since the beginning of this conflict.

And we are also learning that a Palestinian telecommunications company says that all of their service has been knocked out, essentially, which is something to consider as we look at the possibility that this could be the start of Israel's invasion of Gaza.

And beyond that, of course, we have to look at what has happened over the last several days. Israel has been making clear that they are preparing the terrain in Gaza for that ground invasion. They have been intensifying airstrikes, taking out not only senior Hamas commanders, but the kinds of commanders who are going out -- who are in charge of firing rockets, who are in charge of commanding the kind of smaller units that would do much of the fighting inside key parts of the Gaza Strip.

And what we have also seen is the Israeli military going in increasingly and conducting raids, targeted raids inside of Gaza. These past two nights, we have seen tanks cross into the Gaza border, conducting raids within a couple of kilometers of the border.

And, last night, we also saw the Israeli equivalent of the Navy SEALs conducting a maritime raid on Gaza in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, all of this, of course, intended to prepare the terrain for a ground invasion, to probe potential Hamas responses as they see Israeli forces approaching, and also, of course, to go after those tunnels, miles and miles of tunnels under Gaza, which the Israeli military knows will be their number one challenge as they bring in a ground force -- as they are expected to bring a ground force into the Gaza Strip.

TAPPER: Yes.

I want to bring in Colonel Cedric Leighton, if I can.

Colonel Leighton, you're an Air Force colonel; am I correct?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, that's right Jake, absolutely.

TAPPER: So, the reason I ask is because I believe that the IDF feels that they have reached, basically, or are about to reach the end of their -- the capabilities of the efficiency of the air campaign, of phase one of this war on Hamas, that they're -- they have reached the maximum that they're going to be able to do to Hamas leadership and to the infrastructure of Hamas' -- for want of a better term, their war machine, their ability to wage war against Israel from the air.

And they started in recent days to talk more about the miles of tunnels that Hamas has spent literally 20 years building underneath Gaza. And, in fact, the minister of defense, Gallant, said today in a briefing, he said on the record, something along the lines of, all the money that went into Gaza over the years, did they build a university? Did they build a factory? No, they built tunnels and rockets.

And they really described this elaborate network, and they described them as bomb-proof -- I mean, airstrike-proof. And this is something that they -- A, they fear that this is why they think they have -- they took the hostages, they kidnapped these people, so as to prevent the Israelis from just, like, firebombing, napalming the tunnels, because there are 224 innocent people in there.

What can they do in phase two with a ground incursion when it comes to the tunnels? That just sounds absolutely terrifying to go into the tunnels.

LEIGHTON: Yes, it certainly is, Jake.

And you're getting at the right point here, because there is a certain saturation that happens with an air campaign. If you look at the American air campaigns both in Iraq in 2003, as well as in Bosnia and with the Syrians in the late '90s, there was a certain point where there was a degree of saturation that was achieved.

And, in this particular case, you have got a limited area that you can deal with. You have only got 130 or so square miles. You have a limited area in which the Hamas forces operate in. And you have got those tunnels that you mentioned.

[13:15:02]

So, when it comes to bombs that can actually penetrate the ground and go into something like a tunnel area, they're basically limited to, at best, about 100 feet or so, when they -- when they go in. That's the most that they can -- they can actually cause damage at.

So that would affect entrances. It would affect fairly shallow tunnels and things like that. But what you're looking at is probably deeper tunnels. And when it comes to this part, what they have -- what the Israelis have done is, they have basically softened up the terrain.

And now, with phase two of the operation, they are still going to use some air components to do it. And that's what we're seeing tonight in Israel and Gaza. But what else is happening is that the ground forces are beginning to move.

And based on what I'm hearing from both Nic Robertson and Jeremy Diamond and you, we're looking at a very clear effort to go in on the ground and to select certain areas, perhaps where they think the hostages are, but also where they think the command elements of Hamas are located.

So, this is the next phase of the operation. And it looks like there's certainly the potential that this phase of the operation, the second phase of the operation, has begun this evening.

COOPER: Again, we do not have confirmation on exactly what is happening on the ground. We have our reporters in Ashkelon and Sderot.

We're going to take a short break, and our coverage continues in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:20:24]

COOPER: Listening to Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, is giving a briefing from the IDF. Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

REAR ADM. DANIEL HAGARI, IDF SPOKESPERSON: ... following instructions, they're going to save your life.

The enemy is launching missiles. And if you're going to save spaces, you're going to save your life. Recently, we managed to get many alerts from citizen regarding troubles with the application of the Central Command.

This application is one tool in order to let, alert you in real time. There are alerts and Telegram of the Central Command. Please use all the tools in order to be informed.

So far, we notified 310 dead soldiers and 229 abductees. Our heart is with the abductees in this Shabbat evening. We are committed for the national mission to return them home. We are summarizing the third week of the war.

Hundreds of thousands of IDF soldiers are all around the borders of the state in the air, ground and the sea in order to protect the state. In the last day, we see many rockets launched towards Israel. I said and I'm going to say again we have good protection for the state of Israel.

And we know how to deal with threats. And we saw the air force. This is not automatic defense. Please listen to the instructions of the Central Command, and the safe spaces are saving life. And we're going to intercept as many as possible, but it's not automatic.

QUESTION (through translator): You exposed the Shifa Hospital activity. Does it mean that the IDF is going to attack there, they're going to -- and is there going to be any deal with -- for the cease- fire for hostages?

HAGARI (through translator): We're going to bring additional information and many more videos of interrogations of terrorists. We're going to bring additional information regarding using infrastructure by using hospital or civil infrastructure, cynical usage that using the civilian as a live human shield.

We cannot let terror be active from hospitals and attack our citizens. We cannot let it happen, not the state of Israel. We will not let it happen.

Regarding the rumors about a deal with the hostages, I advise you not to deal with rumors. We're talking terror and psychological terror and a cynical usage of Hamas. We are going to bring you any reliable information and relevant. We will give it to the families, and then we're going to update the public.

Until then, please don't give into manipulation of the psychological terror of Hamas.

Last question.

QUESTION: Few green targets that were supposed to be safe and continue the school activity that were defined by the Central Commands were attacked today.

HAGARI (through translator): We are trying to have routine in the shadow of war, with the coordination of the municipalities Be'er Sheva and Ashkelon and the rest of the municipalities.

[13:25:00]

We're going to review. And if we can have routine and to let have -- let them have education, the education system working, it's a big dilemma But we are in charge of it. The Central Command and the public will know about the instructions.

Shabbat shalom.

COOPER: That was Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari of the IDF saying that the ground operation is, in his words, expanding. The exact size and scope of that, he did not go into.

Colonel Cedric Leighton is joining us as well.

Colonel, to you, what does that mean, the ground operation expanding? LEIGHTON: So, Anderson, I think what we're seeing here is that more

moves by the Israeli forces using armor and possibly infantry units, infantry squads going into specific target areas, is what it sounds like at the moment.

Now, this incursion may take the form of a massive movement of forces, or it may take a movement -- the form of much smaller, more precise special operations-like movements. We don't know that yet, obviously. But it seems as if this is the start of that particular movement that will perhaps gain them a little bit more territory.

Perhaps they're going after certain targets. It seems to also be done in concert with both air activity, as well as naval activity. So it seems to be a multipronged approach, using all the elements of Israeli IDF, Israeli Defense Force, power. And that could very well mean that they're going after targets in the north, it seems like, more Gaza City and the area just south of there.

So, I would basically say the northern half of the country right now seems to be the center of interest. There could still be activity in the south, of course, and in other areas, but we just haven't heard about that yet.

TAPPER: And, Colonel -- sorry, go ahead.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Yes, Colonel Leighton, just in terms of a ground operation in this phase, can they bring in close air support? I mean, we have seen some movement of helicopters, but it's mostly the munitions which have been dropped or by airplanes or artillery fire.

In an operation like this, obviously, troops on the ground, ideally, would have some level of air support. Do you know what that will be in this kind of a ground operation?

LEIGHTON: Yes, it depends on exactly how they want to employ that Anderson.

But, yes, they would -- what they can do is, they can bring in close air support. And that can take several different forms. Most likely, it would be helicopter air support, so rotary-wing assets, but it could also be fixed-wing assets.

And there are two missions that the fixed-wing aircraft, the normal fighter jets, like an F-16 or an F-15, could carry out. And those missions are very much in term -- in line with close air support missions. It is not the only thing those aircraft can do, but they can very much be used for that. It would be a little bit difficult for them to do it in a very crowded area.

And they'd have to deconflict, in other words, make sure that they don't target their own, don't hit their own forces, but they can absolutely use both rotary-wing and fixed-wing assets to perform close air support missions. And I would expect them to do that.

COOPER: All right, Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you.

We're going to take a short break. Our coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)