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OSCE Monitors Still Unable to Access Crash Site; Bombardment on Gaza City; Can Israel, Palestine Go Before ICC for War Crimes?; Destruction of Hamas Would be Dangerous; Ukrainian Government Fires Missiles at Rebels

Aired July 29, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I know that you have been, you and your team have been afraid to go to the crash site because of the fighting that's going on in Ukraine right now. There must be a certain amount of fear today as well.

ALEXANDER HUG, DEPUTY CHIEF MONITOR, OSCE (via telephone): We have made arrangements with all parties involved. They know what we are undertaking right now. They understand what our objective is. And, as yesterday, we will make an assessment hour by hour. Should there be fire, should there be no freedom of movement, and should be held off at checkpoints, we will make the decision to return and this will be another fail.

But I'm confident we are now able to make the preparations that a future convoy with the experts will manage to get through to the crash site.

COSTELLO: Do you have armed guards with you? Are any of you armed?

HUG: Negative, none of the special monitoring mission to the Ukraine is armed.

COSTELLO: So, that's a little scary as well, right? Just explain to us the frustration that your team has felt at not being able to get to the crash site.

HUG: Obviously there is frustration in not being able to conduct the job we've been mandated to by 57 member states. We have made arrangements, as I have told you before, twice in a row, with all parties involved. These arrangements have not been border tight and have not been adhered to, which force us to return and obviously it makes it difficult. And me and my team of course suffer frustration, but that goes along with that difficult job.

We're not giving up. And as we speak, we are en route and we'll try again, new ways and have spoken through the night yesterday, all day today, and we are confident that eventually we'll manage to get back to the crash site, because it's in all -- everyone's interest that we manage to get there and conduct our job of service and that the experts that came here from far away to conduct their job to collect the remains and the dead bodies so they can be finally returned to their families and, for us, so that these families find closure. COSTELLO: Well, we admire your courage and thank you for your

efforts. Alexander Hug, thanks for joining us on the phone. I really appreciate it.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: All right, these are pictures just taken by CNN of Gaza. You can see huge plumes of smoke over the area, so the bombardment continues. This bombardment comes minutes after we learned that Palestinian leaders of the West Bank are offering a 24-hour truce. According to the official Palestinian news agency, Hamas and Islamic jihad factions agree, though there's still no word from Israel. It is worth noting these leaders are in the West Bank and not in Gaza.

Now, as I said, this news comes on the heels of Israel's biggest bombardment yet. Much of Gaza City is still shrouded in smoke and the dust of what had been buildings.

Israelis pounded 70 Hamas targets, including a radio station, with some strikes appear to be horrible accidents. Neither Israel nor Hamas will accept the blame for an explosion at a refugee camp that left at least eight children dead.

Karl Penhaul spoke with some of those witnesses, including children whose guardians granted us permission to interview them. Karl now joins us from Gaza. Good morning.

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. And let me bring you up to date on what is going on now.

Since last night, in fact, the Israelis have been pushing an offensive on all parts of Gaza, as some of the fiercest air strikes that we have seen in the course of this three-week confrontation. And just behind me, in fact, you may still be able to make out some of the smoke there on the eastern horizon of Gaza, some of the largest explosions we've seen at any point during this three-week-old confrontation.

It appears Israelis have been dropping 2,000-pound bombs from the air. We've seen at least four of those huge bombs go up from there. Difficult from here to tell what the target may be. It could be some of those tunnel complexes that Israel and its military is so keen to destroy.

But, of course, this war is much more than air strikes, about munitions, about troops on the ground. Most of the casualties so far have been civilians. Yesterday, as you say, no different -- again, children in the firing line, children seeing things that they shouldn't have to see.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PENHAUL (voice-over): You'll never get to meet little Mohammed. But his friend next door wants to tell you a bit about him.

"Top of the class at math, Barcelona football star Lionel Messi was his hero. He would always say Messi was an amazing player. He loved football, he worshipped Messi," she says. Orla (ph) is 12 years old.

"Glass sprayed on me so loud, so terrifying I can't even describe it," she says. Mohammed was just yards from his front door. Witnesses say he and the other kids were playing toy guns. They call it doom-doom (ph). The plastic pistol now broken, the children all dead.

Annas (ph) reels off their names.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

PENAHUL: It's a sight he should never have seen.

"I saw a boy cut up right there. Over there a man, he looked dead. And I saw a boy who was dead, too," he says. Just 8 years old, he mans up and describes the explosion.

A bloody handmark in a doorway, a lucky escape for them, but not for their grandfather. They say he died buying them holiday candy.

"I saw Grandpa. His head was cut, his arms and legs were cut, he was all cut up," they say.

Witnesses young and old say they heard a drone and then the sound of a missile fired onto their street. While we were there, we saw a militant rocket launched about a mile away. The warring factions blame each other. We've heard their excuses before. But there's no excuse for this. Or this.

(on camera): Just look at the hole this shrapnel blasted in this car door. Imagine the damage that that would do to a child's body.

(voice-over): As I sit on the pavement with Annas (ph), the ambulance arrived with young Mohammed's body. "I want to go and see my cousin," he says.

PENHAUL: Sorry, we may not have met Mohammed, but it's already time to say good-bye.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PENHAUL (on camera): Carol, I've stepped out of the way of our camera so that you can see that shot in eastern Gaza. That is what is called the Tufa neighborhood. It has been the scene of fierce fighting between Hamas commandos and the Israeli military.

And what we're seeing now is the aftermath of renewed bomb strikes on that area, a series of 2,000-pound bombs slamming into targets across there and that pall of smoke now rising hundreds of feet into the air. Those are, by far, the largest explosions and the most concentrated set of explosions on a single target that we have seen in the course of this three-week confrontation. It is not clear from our vantage point right now what kind of target

that may be. It could well be that it is one of the tunnel complexes that the Israeli military said it is going after. Possibly, too, an indication that there could have been Hamas fighters on the ground, but certainly from that type of bunker-busting bombs they're using, probably something very deep underground.

I can once again hear fighter jets overhead. It could be that they're coming in for more strikes there. We will keep you informed if they are, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Karl Penhaul, you stay safe. Thanks so much.

The carnage has prompted U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to call not only for a halt in the violence in the Middle East but for those responsible on both sides to be brought to justice. His comments come just days after the U.N. human rights chief said war crimes may have been committed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAN KI-MON, U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL: The fighting has claimed well over 1,000 Palestinian lives, most of them civilians, hundreds of them children. Hamas rocket fire has claimed the lives of three Israeli civilians. There must be accountability, and justice, for crimes committed by all sides.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Joining me now, Bill Van Esveld, a senior research for Human Rights Watch. In a CNN.com piece, he writes how such charges have not been pursued in the past, saying, quote, "Dismal as Israel's record is in prosecuting war crimes, Hamas has prosecuted no one. West Bank Palestinian leaders intimated they may seek action in the International Criminal Court, which has indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza as well as unlawful Israeli air strikes."

Bill, welcome and thank you so much for being here.

BILL VAN ESVELD, SENIOR RESEARCHER, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Thanks for having me.

COSTELLO: We have seen few war crimes tried in the Hague. Why would this conflict or any other conflict be different?

VAN ESVELD: Well, there's a number of factors, one is that this is the third major escalation in Gaza and southern Israel since 2008-09 alone in which hundreds and hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed and there have also been Israeli civilians killed by rocket strikes.

What's different about this is that the Palestinians now have an open door to go to the International Criminal Court. They did not before. They tried in 2009, after the end of what the Israeli military called Operation Cast Lead. But, at that point, Palestine was not recognized as a state, or rather the court said they couldn't figure out whether Palestine was a state or not so they couldn't accept jurisdiction over it.

That problem from the Palestinian perspective has been resolved. The United Nations said Palestine was a non-member observer state in 2012 so that door is now open to them and we're strongly encouraging them to go not just for justice for Palestinian victims but for victims an all sides.

COSTELLO: Can the Hague or the U.N. adequately investigate alleged war crimes during an active conflict?

VAN ESVELD: Well, investigating war crimes is obviously very difficult at the best of times and even more so when the conflict is ongoing, but I can give you some examples of cases that we have already investigated for Human Rights Watch and that the U.N. has a human rights team on the ground already that's also been looking into some cases.

So, for example, you can check out the kind of weapons that have been used in an air strike by the Israeli side. You can talk to witnesses. You can try and double check everything you hear, cross-checking against any militants that have been claimed to have been killed by one of the armed groups, or rather that they claim as martyrs. So you can check whether there was a military target that the Israelis could have been attacking. You can check what kind of munition was used.

For example, there was a strike on the Gaza Beach just outside a hotel that was full of journalists and we identified the weapon used as a spike missile, which actually has a camera in the nose of the missile, and that missile can see what it's being shot at and be steered on the way to the target. And yet the target in this case was young boys who'd been playing on the beach. Similarly, you can investigate the rocket attacks on the other side. So it is possible, difficult but possible.

COSTELLO: I know the U.N. is actively investigating the shelling of a U.N. school that served as a shelter, 13 died there, many more were wounded. Why is it so difficult in that case to determine who's to blame?

VAN ESVELD: Well, in that case, you know, it's a question partly of identifying the weapons used. The Israeli military released a drone video of a mortar hitting the courtyard of the school, but there was damage to other parts of the school as well. We have preliminary information about several types of weapons used there, but we can't be sure yet if they were found in the school or if they might have been brought in from air strikes outside the school, and then taken inside. So you've just got to look at all the evidence, talk to as many witnesses independently as you can, as soon after the attack as you can, check out the physical evidence, check out what both sides are saying. You've just got to look at a huge amount of evidence and it's not easy.

COSTELLO: If Hamas is to blame for the deaths of its own civilians and some people claim Hamas is causing the deaths of civilians on purpose, could it, too, be brought to justice? VAN ESVELD: Yes, it certainly could be. Members of Palestinian armed

groups who are responsible for deliberately launching rockets at Israeli cities, which are full of civilians, you know, civilians cannot be attacked by either side, by the Israelis or the Palestinians. So yes, absolutely. But I would just say that there's a lot of, I think, misleading or not helpful discussion about human shielding on the Hamas side. And there's a very specific legal definition for human shielding, and that's forcing a civilian to be right next to your military target when you're shooting a rocket or something like that.

We haven't seen that kind of forcing or coercion happen yet, although we are investigating it. So that's just to say that it's not necessarily illegal to fight in an urban environment and I say that because, this is often used as an excuse for Israeli air strikes that are described as tragic mistakes, but really the blame is all on Hamas and that's not correct. Each side is responsible for what it's doing and just because your enemy is violating the laws of war, doesn't allow you to.

COSTELLO: Bill Van Esveld with Human Rights Watch, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

VAN ESVELD: Thank you.

COSTELL: I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right. You see those huge plumes of smoke over Eastern Gaza. Karl Penhaul reporting that the bombardment is certainly continuing today. He suspects 2,000 pound bombs are being dropped, perhaps to destroy these underground tunnel complexes, perhaps to destroy Hamas militiamen fighting from the ground. We just don't know, we can't get close enough. But again, you see the plumes of smoke rising in Eastern Gaza. The fighting goes on.

Israel is making that ferocious bid to cripple Hamas, but what's the end game? Does it really want to destroy Hamas and not just the tunnel system? An Israeli airstrike hit a radio station run by Hamas, one of more than 70 sites targeted overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

COSTELLO (voice-over): The latest bombardment raising questions about Israel's true end game. CNN's Brian Todd is looking into the possible future of Gaza if Hamas is crushed.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

COSTELLO (on camera): Good morning, Brian

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. You know, serious warnings being sent this morning. A top military intelligence official and analyst we spoke to say there are elements inside Gaza which are worse than Hamas. They are more radical, more violent. One of them is a group that has wreaked havoc in Iraq and in Syria recently with a series of vicious battles and grotesque treatment of its enemies. We have to warn you, some viewers might find some images in this story disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TODD (voice-over): Israel pushes on, destroying Hamas tunnels, degrading the group's fire power, amid calls to go even further. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren says, "Israel must be permitted to crush Hamas." If Hamas was wiped out, who would fill the void? The Pentagon's top intelligence officer said the threat could grow even greater in an interview with CNN's Evan Perez.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are other things there behind Hamas, if Hamas gets out of the way, that perhaps could be worse.

UNIENTIFIED MALE: We would probably end up with something much worse. Something like an ISIS or an ISIL.

TODD: ISIS, ISIL, now calling itself the Islamic State, three names for the same group. Radical Islamist fighters who have taken over much Iraq. So brutal, they have been disowned by Al Qaeda. They just overran an army base in Syria. Video of the aftermath of that battle purports to show the severed heads of Islamic State victims, impaled on poles in the city of Raqqa. CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video.

Could this play out in Gaza? Experts say there are elements of the Islamic State in Gaza along with other groups more extreme than Hamas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE If Hamas were somehow destroyed and nothing was left in its place and you had a vacuum, you can have a situation where the most militant elements from Hamas, from Islamic jihad, Palestinian- Islamic jihad, from the smaller (inaudible) groups could somehow band together to something more radical.

TODD: But analysts say it's not likely the so called Islamic State would actually take over Gaza. They are too small in number and not well coordinated there. So how far will Israel go with Hamas?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's important to deal Hamas a decisive blow, not necessarily replacing it, and then demilitarize Hamas so you have a defanged Hamas running Gaza.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TODD: But could a defanged Hamas be someday over run ISIS or other more militant groups who might eventually gather steam in Gaza? Analyst Matthew Levitt says Hamas probably would still have a lot of political and social power in Gaza having run schools, hospitals, and other civil services. Carol.

COSTELLO: Okay, so could Hamas somehow be demilitarized and still be able to keep power? Is that possible?

TODD: It is possible, but maybe not too likely, Carol. One scenario being discussed is maybe wiping out Hamas' tunnels, its rocket supplies, but leaving them with small arms. As one analyst says, let them keep their Kalashnikovs, just get rid of those tunnels, those rockets, and that capability to strike at Israel. But, a defanged Hamas might be vulnerable. There are some pretty extreme groups inside Gaza.

COSTELLO: Alright, Brian Todd reporting live for us this morning. Thanks so much. The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking news

COSTELLO: Good morning to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We start with breaking news out of Ukraine. In what marks a major escalation in the ongoing crisis, CNN has now learned that Ukraine's military did fire ballistic missiles at rebels. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is live in Washington. CNN military analyst Major General Spider Marks is on the phone. Nick Paton Walsh, our senior international correspondent, will be live for us in Ukraine in just a moment. But Barbara, I want to start with you. You found out this information, tell us more.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.