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Rescue Efforts Continue for Sunken South Korean Ferry; Search Continues for Missing Malaysian Plane; Russian Separatists Still Active in Ukraine; Outbreak of Ebola Hits Guinea

Aired April 19, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. Welcome to the CNN Newsroom.

A drone strike targeting Al Qaeda militants in Yemen killed at least 15 people today according to Yemeni defense officials, 12 were suspected Al Qaeda members. The strike hit a pickup truck in southwestern Yemen, an area known as a hotbed for the terrorist organization. Sunlen Serfaty is live for us now at the White House. Sunlen, has the White House commented on this?

SUNLYN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Fred, the White House is not commenting on it. They're not even confirming that this drone strike happened. They're referring all the questions to the Yemeni government. Keep in mind, this operation could have been conducted by the U.S., either by the CIA or the Pentagon. Now, sources in the region confirm they were targeting three well-known operatives in the region, Al Qaeda operatives in the region that were linked with a training camp in southern Yemen, and they had been closely tracked and watched for some time. Now, it's important to note here the U.S. is the only country that has carried out these drone strikes in Yemen. For a little perspective, let's turn to CNN analyst Peter Bergen on how often the U.S. carries out the drone attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: This is part of a campaign that has been going on since President Obama assumed office. There have been 91 drone strikes so far under President Obama and 15 other kinds of cruise missile strikes. So more than 100 taken together. This has cost the group dearly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SERFATY: Now, including today's attack, Fred, there have been eight attacks by drone in Yemen by the United States this year. Back to you.

WHITFIELD: And Sunlen, several civilians were killed in today's attack. Do we know more about those circumstances?

SERFATY: Sources in the region say that it's really a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. These three civilians were in a car that was right by that pickup truck that was targeted.

It's worth recalling, of course, that President Obama about this time last year, in May of 2013, he reorganized United States drone policy, you know, really addressing this issue of collateral civilian damage. Now, he really defended the use of the strategy in counterterrorism efforts by the United States, but he said that it's effective, it's legal, but he added that it's not moral or wise in every instance. Fred?

WHITFIELD: All right, Sunlen, thanks so much at the White House.

Now to South Korea, where the death toll has risen to 36 in that horrific ferry disaster. Nearly 270 people are still missing. Earlier the country coast guard brought bodies to a port to be identified. Some parents already have given DNA samples to help with this process. The ferry was carrying 475 people, most of them students and teachers, when it sank.

There were -- there was also a class from a high school on that ship. They were on a class fieldtrip, and they were heading to the resort island when the ship rolled over. The ship's captain was rescued along with 174 others, but he also faces charges as well as some very tough questions now. Our Kyung Lah has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ferry captain answering a question consuming hundreds of desperate relatives -- why would you order passengers to stay on a sinking ship?

"The current was very high and the water temperature was cold, and if you had not worn a life jacket or even if you had worn one, if you got off the boat with no judgment you would have been swept very far away," he says.

The captain is handcuffed, arrested on five different charges, including abandoning ship and causing bodily injury resulting in death according to a South Korean news agency. In this newly released video, you can see the captain right after being rescued from his own sinking ship while hundreds of others were left behind. In the eyes of many here in South Korea, he's public enemy number one.

Prosecutors revealed the capital wasn't on the bridge when the boat began to sink, but still hold him responsible for, quote, "failing to slow down while sailing the narrow route and making the turn excessively." Also released, radio traffic between the ferry and authorities. The first sign of distress came in at 8:55 a.m. local time. Now all that remains of the ferry above the surface are buoys marking its position.

New footage from inside the doomed ferry continues to surface. In this survivor's video, the ship is already at an extreme angle and passengers clamor to high ground. Others brace themselves inside as they were instructed by the crew. It's unclear if these people made it out alive. One man who did make it out alive couldn't bear the reality in the end, and in a wooded area near where distraught relatives are camped out in Jindo, police say the vice principal of the school where these kids attended hung himself. In this suicide note police say he took responsibility for the loss of life and asked for his ashes to be placed over the site. His suicide has heightened fears that relatives of the missing might soon do the same.

"I want to jump into the sea," she says, "Thinking about my child in the sea, how can I as a parent eat or drink? I hate myself for this."

Kyung Lah, CNN, Jindo, South Korea.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: The next few days could prove crucial in the search for flight 370. Searchers now say the underwater drone looking for the plane could finish its work within a week. That's sooner than many had expected. The Bluefin 21 has been capturing clear and sharp images of the ocean bottom but has yet to come up with any trace of the plane. Malaysia's acting transport minister says the searchers will likely have to reassess the search operation in the next few days regardless if anything else is found. Today 11 military planes and 12 ships are scouring a search zone that has been narrowed dramatically.

So does this mean a complete change in search strategy? Straight ahead, Erin McLaughlin is in Perth, Australia. So how big a shift would this be?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka. Well, I think it really does depend on what happens in the next five to seven days. They are in a critical stage of this operation and they're going to have to be making decisions. There's still no sign of this missing plane. Already authorities are talking next steps, possibly broadening out the search area, maybe exploring, introducing additional submersibles to help in the search. Take a listen to what Malaysia's acting transportation minister had to say in a press conference earlier today about possible next steps.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, MALAYSIAN ACTING TRANSPORT MINISTER: I have to stress that there's -- that this is not to stop the operations, but to also consider other approaches which may include widening the scope of the search and utilizing other assets that could be relevant in the search operations. The search will always continue. It is just a matter of approach.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLAUGHLIN: That being said, the focus on this operation very much on the task at hand, on the work of the Bluefin 21 scouring these waters. And a source close to the operation telling us as of 10:30 a.m. eastern time it was still in the water, still searching. Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: And so Erin, what about the aerial search? How has, you know, that strategy changed over the course of the few days?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, last week we heard from Angus Houston, the man spearheading the multinational search operation. At a press conference he seemed to insinuate that those efforts were actually winding down. In his view it was becoming less likely there would be a visual identification of debris from the plane. The focus was really shifting to the Bluefin 21 and its work and its underwater search.

With that being said, we haven't seen any signs of that effort waning. We understand that the search efforts by air and by sea for visual signs of the debris will continue through Easter weekend. Fredricka?

WHITFIELD: All right, Erin McLaughlin, thanks so much.

Surviving a deadly disaster, how do you cope when you escape death but others don't?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Off the South Korean coast an urgent race to find more survivors in the sunken ferry disaster, the death toll now 36. Divers are desperately searching for students and teachers who may be in or around that ship that capsized Wednesday. Some of the bodies that were recovered were returned to port earlier today. Divers have been able to rescue at least 174 people, but now there's concern about how those survivors will cope emotionally.

Listen to what one mother said after she encouraged her daughter to go on that trip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My daughter said to me, mom, I don't want to go there because I went there -- again, two time again. So I tell her, I think this trip will be very great experience for you, for your school days. So I'm very regretful. I'm very regretful of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: I spoke with our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen about survivor's guilt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Elizabeth, clearly, there's going to be a lot of that.

DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There is. So on top of having lost a loved one there's a guilt that somehow you could have done more even when you really couldn't have. It's just a natural human reaction. And there are so many stories. Let's just talk about a couple of them. There was a six-year-old girl whose seven-year-old brother and her mother put on her life jacket, and now those two, the mother and the brother, cannot be found. There was -- I mean, just --

WHITFIELD: How is she going to deal? Once, I guess, she comes to terms or realizes her entire family is gone and she's going to remember that moment of when they put that lifejacket on her. COHEN: That's true. And especially for children. Children often think they are at fault or sort of at the center of something even when they're not. For a child or an adult, it's going to take a lot of convincing, a lot of talking from family, from friends, from professionals, if necessary, to say you are not at fault. There was nothing could you do.

Or if you think about a situation where maybe someone was in the boat and managed to get out but was surrounded by people who down get out, you know, they may remember that moment. Maybe someone was asking them for help and they couldn't help them. And you know, just those moments could haunt them for a very long time, and they need to remember, there was nothing that they could have done. They didn't do anything wrong.

WHITFIELD: Of course, we're hearing from the family members, the parents, those who encouraged their kids to take the trip. Maybe a couple kids who didn't want to take it and their regret some of the parents are feeling.

COHEN: Right. There's a mom named Katherine Kim who talked about that. She said my child didn't want to go on the fieldtrip and I encouraged them to go on the fieldtrip. Logically, she didn't do anything wrong. I mean, people encourage their children to go on fieldtrips all the time. But still, again, it's a part of our basic, human sort of mental structure that we blame ourselves for something like that.

WHITFIELD: So what will need to be extended to the people feeling this range of emotions?

COHEN: You know, doctors tell me it's different for every person. And also that it's different culturally. So it's probably a little difficult for us to sit here not being a part of that culture because it differs from culture to culture. But in the U.S., for example, some people benefit from retelling their story. So for example, retelling the story how I escaped from the boat, or a parent retelling the story of how they heard that their child was in danger and then found out that unfortunately they couldn't be found. Some people really benefit from retelling.

And other people, that's not such a benefit and they really need distance. That distance is what helps them. So it's different for every person. And I think, you know what psychiatrists and psychologists have told me is you may live with some of this forever. It's not always possible to lose it. It's whether you can function with it.

WHITFIELD: Wow. This is going to be a long, painful road ahead.

COHEN: Yes, absolutely.

WHITFIELD: Elizabeth Cohen. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

(END VIDEOTAPE) WHITFIELD: And a high-tech scanner is scouring the Indian Ocean looking for flight 370, but why aren't more drones and subs being deployed to that search zone? The answer next in the Newsroom.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: You may be wondering why search crews looking for flight 370 aren't using more resources beneath the ocean surface. Tom Foreman has the answer.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The search above the water has involved dozens of planes and ships scouring thousands of square miles, so why not do the same thing below the water with this submersible robot? Why not have more than one Bluefin down there? Let's talk about that. We start with the basic premise here, what does the Bluefin do?

It goes back and forth over the surface. We refer to it as mowing the lawn, taking sonic images of the ocean floor looking for any anomalies out there. So theoretically, you could put in five or 10 or 20 of them and have them dot same thing. That would cut down the time dramatically. You'd be talking about covering it in a matter of days maybe instead of weeks or months.

So why is that so hard? This is why. First off, there's an issue of availability. There are only about 100 of these in the world. The one being used now cost about $3.5 million. So you have to find everyone who bought them out there, governments, research agencies, businesses who bought them for a purpose, who are using them, and say, give up your work and hand them over to us for an indefinitely period of time for this hunt. That's a tall order to fill.

Secondly, you have to have support teams for these. You need to have technicians, scientists who know how to program them, how to read the data off of them, how to maintain them, how to even put them in and out of the water. This thing weighs about 1,700 pounds. It's like lowering a small car into the water and retrieving it over and over again. It is difficult, and it is dangerous.

And lastly, there is the issue of the terrain. We've talked about this many times, we have this image that they're going down to a flat ocean floor to map it, but that may not be the case as all. It could be much more like this, with hills and crags and valleys, and these vessels down there could be going up and down and intersecting with each other and doing all sorts of things that make it so much harder than it may appear.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: All right, thanks so much, Tom Foreman.

All right, still to come in the Newsroom, the deadliest accident ever on Mount Everest jot got deadlier. Details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) WHITFIELD: The deal that had been brokered for peace in Ukraine is being ignored. Thousands of Russian troops are near the eastern Ukraine border. Russia says they're there due to President Obama instability. All this while pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk have dug in in defiance of that international deal aimed at resolving the crisis and preventing an all-out civil war. The separatists are refusing to leave public buildings and calls to lay down their arms.

The number of fatalities in what was already the deadliest accident on Mount Everest rose again today when search and rescue teams found the body of another Sherpa guide. In total, 13 people were killed and three others remain missing after an avalanche struck at the 20,000 foot mark at the world's highest peak. The deadliest year on Everest was 1996 when 15 people died. More than 200 people have died on that mountain in the last 100 years.

Imagine driving at night and then seeing this mysterious fireball light up the sky. That dash-cam video posted on YouTube of a meteor- like object appearing so streak across the northern Russian night sky. Reports of any damage or injury from the blast? There aren't any. You might remember last winter a massive meteor exploded over southwestern Russia injuring more than 1,500 people.

An Ebola outbreak in Africa has already claimed nearly 130 lives. The disease, the virus, rather, is so deadly that those fighting it put their own lives at risk. Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on the rising number of cases from the West African nation of Guinea.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: The numbers have continued to go up and it's certainly not the news people wanted. There's a real fight here to try and identify these patients, isolate them, treat them. I have to tell you, more than just about anything else I've seen in medicine, certainly in situations like this, the real issue is a lot of these doctors and nurses, they're risking their own lives, their own health, to be able to take care of these patients. It's extraordinary.

And take a look at what happens when we go inside an isolation ward. You're about to go inside an isolation ward in Guinea. There is a reason you might not have seen images like this before. These patients are fighting one of the deadliest diseases in the world, Ebola. It has disarmed their immune system, shut off their blood's ability to clot, and inundated the organs in their body. Up to nine out of 10 patients will die.

But this horror is isolated. We found traffic to still be busy here. Markets are full. Children, lots of children, still smiling. You see, as scary as Ebola is, it's not particularly contagious. It doesn't disburse easily through the air or live long on surfaces either, and people don't typically spread it until they are sick, really sick.

When that is the case, the patients are not up walking around on the busy streets. They are down in bed in hospitals, or worse. Even the dead are highly contagious.

DR. PIERRE ROLLIN, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: The story is always the same.

GUPTA: Dr. Pierre Rollin from the CDC has helped trace Ebola outbreaks for more than 30 years.

ROLLIN: The risk is not the people dealing with Ebola patients. It's the people dealing with regular patients not thinking of Ebola.

GUPTA: It only take as small amount of the virus anywhere on your skin to cause an infection. And as I learned, no precaution is too small for the doctors who care for these patients.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out.

GUPTA: Tim Gigatek (ph) is one of the doctors without borders. He's from Canada. He comes into these settings for weeks at a time. He is not married, he has no children. That would be a job liability, he tells me. Multiple pairs of gloves and masks, the head is completely covered, a multilayered gown, boots, and then an apron. Its positively suffocating in the 100-degree weather.

Preparing to treat a patient with Ebola is like preparing to land on the moon, but you're their own visitor, the only person helping them survive. They do this so people outside these wards, the people on the streets, will never know what it's like to be inside.

There's something else worth pointing out as well. The local health care workers, people who live here in Guinea, they also, when they take care of these patients they are obviously putting themselves at risk from a health standpoint, but oftentimes because of this stigma associated with Ebola, they can't even tell anybody they're working here. They can't tell their families, their community members. If they tell people they are helping patients with Ebola, they, themselves, these health care workers will be stigmatized themselves. So it's an extraordinary situation.

Again, with regard to numbers, they have gone up over the last few days, although a little bit good news. The rate at which they're going up appears to have slowed down a bit.