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Hamas Launches Unprecedented Terror Attack On Israel; At least 200 Israelis Dead, Hundreds Injured In Hamas Attack; 232 Palestinians Killed In Israel Response. Aired 3-4pm ET

Aired October 07, 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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[15:00:39]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: I'm Dana Bash in Washington, and we are following breaking news. We continue our special coverage this hour. Just moments ago, President Biden vowed to stand with Israel and condemned the terror attack.

This attack came at sunrise. The Palestinian terror group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel, not just on Israel's military, but an untold number of civilians.

You can see here, not even the youngest of children are being spared the horror of the attacks on civilian areas. And video appears to show Hamas fighters taking civilian hostages. There are reports that Hamas is taking hostages across the border back into Gaza.

The attack comes on the 50th Anniversary of the Yom Kippur War when Arab states blitzed Israel. And today's attack also comes on the Jewish Sabbath and on a Jewish holy day. At least 200 Israelis are dead and nearly 1500 wounded.

Hamas has fired thousands of rockets. And we want to warn you that some video from Hamas may be disturbing, but it is important for you to see what they are doing. Fighters are storming the main border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip and they have infiltrated Israeli cities. There have been gun battles in the streets.

CNN teams are deployed around the world to bring you all the latest developments. I want to start with CNN's Nic Robertson, who joins us by phone because he just landed and got off the plane at Israel's main international airport where sirens warned of possible rockets.

Here's how things unfolded before I get to Nic. I'm going to show you what happened to him on the tarmac.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: We literally just got off the plane here in Ben Gurion Airport. The sirens have gone off. People are taking cover. We got off the bus. People are taking cover. And you can hear the intercept missiles banging in the air. Nothing incoming here, but everyone is taking cover. They got down. A lot of concern about what's going to happen here tonight. Look at that, everywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Again, that was just a short while ago. Now I want to go to Nic Robertson, who is now joining us from outside the Israeli town of Ashkelon. Nic, you said there is a lot of concern about tonight. It is 10 p.m. there. What are you seeing at this moment?

ROBERTSON: So we've driven south of Tel Aviv along the main coastal highway that goes in the direction of Gaza, perhaps for about 15 miles from Gaza, outside the town of Ashkelon at the moment.

As we've gone further south towards Gaza, there's been less and less traffic on the roads, almost nothing now. And I think we've arrived at the place that the road is now blocked to civilian traffic by a police checkpoint here. We've seen a couple of checkpoints on the highway stopping traffic from going north, checking traffic going north. Clearly, the concern that there may still be other terrorists on the loose and security services want to intercept them.

[15:05:23]

But there's all the stores down here that we're seeing, they're all shut and closed. So this really is a situation at the moment where the concerns of Israelis right now are what happens next? What are the details of what they've witnessed through the day.

This is horrific, as you've no doubt been hearing through the day. This has been absolutely horrific for the residents of this country. They have not witnessed something like this in perhaps a generation or more.

It is shocking and it is clear that they are bracing and having spoken with a regional diplomat as well, people bracing for the potential of worse yet to come. But security out on the highway now blocking traffic going south towards Gaza and the area very, very quiet.

BASH: And Nic, as you are speaking to us, as you are headed towards Ashkelon, Israel, our viewers are seeing some video of some of the devastation, thanks to the attacks by Hamas, the terrorist group Hamas on and inside Israel.

So you can see kind of what you're headed for right now. And I realize that you just got on the ground. But talk for a little bit, if you will, about getting into Israel and what that was like, because first of all, it's really remarkable that you got in, considering how limited air traffic is, understandably so, because of the -- what is going on, the bombs going off, and what is going on in the sky, iron dome is certainly protecting a lot of Israelis, but not as much as people would have thought ahead of time. And we're seeing that from these pictures, and of course from the devastating and horrific photos that are online, and some of the video we played earlier, of the killing and capturing of civilians.

Older Israelis, younger Israelis, women, children, grandmothers, watch this. Showing viewers, a civilian woman taken from a car and kidnapped and

put into the car by terrorists. And we're showing this so that people get a real understanding and have a real understanding of what happened and what is happening, maybe now in the dead of night, on the ground in Israel to innocent civilians, Nic.

ROBERTSON: And this is what shocks people here so much. This is what we've heard from residents, we've talked here. This is out with the ordinary. What comes from Hamas in Gaza are rockets. They are not gunmen coming out into the Israeli community and capturing, killing, kidnapping people in this brutal way.

It is testament to the pilot, to the security services in Ben Gurion. I think that our flight was able to land when we got in. You've seen the situation, the iron dome was in action, the sirens were going off.

When we came through the arrival hall, the board there, the arrivals board said all the other flights were cancelled. And it seems to be an effort by the Israelis to try to allow some aircraft to come in.

And as we were coming out of the airport, there were a lot of people, they looked like tourists who were flooding into the airport, hoping to catch some of those now cancelled incoming flights, hoping to catch some of those flights out.

I suspect that they were in for a long wait at the airport as they tried to get clarity. But the Israeli security services, the airport authorities in Ben Gurion are very familiar with situations like this and are able to work around these incoming artillery barrages that we witnessed this evening, able to bring one plane in, stop others. So it does seem the intent is to try to keep the airport functioning in some way. And certainly there are a lot of people, as I say, arriving at Ben Gurion Airport, hoping to leave from what we've witnessed. They should really check with their allies to find out if their flights are coming in before going all the way to the airport. That would be my advice from what we've seen.

[15:10:11]

But across the country this evening, the expectations of what could happen next are most concerning. People -- this is utterly, utterly out with the normal that Hamas gunmen come into Israel proper, kill and kidnap on this scale out of Gaza, out of the ordinary.

BASH: Yeah, out of the ordinary indeed. And I'm glad that you emphasized that because people might be tuning in and saying, you know, we've certainly seen bloodshed time and time again in this neighborhood of the world.

And this is a conflict, which is a very complicated conflict that has been going on for, you said, a generation, way more than a generation. But this is different. The pictures that we're seeing, the stories and the tales and the horrific anecdotes that we are hearing from in and around the border near Gaza, it's not something that, I mean, people are comparing it obviously to the 1973 Yom Kippur War because it's almost 50 years ago to today. Back then, just like now, Israeli intelligence appeared to have been

caught very flat footed. But when it comes to the kind of attack then and now, this is very different.

ROBERTSON: This is very different. People, unfortunately, particularly in the south of Israel, particularly in communities like Sderot, particularly around Gaza, they are used occasionally to the sirens going off, getting into shelters. They're used to the potential for rockets coming from Gaza.

But to have -- but to have gunmen come out, penetrate their communities, surround houses, bang on doors, pull people from their homes. Shoot people dead, families dead on the highway, as we've seen today, beyond anyone's expectation here.

People are aware of the tensions. They're aware of the situation. They're aware of the high level of security and the potential risk. I've been in some of these communities that have been affected over the past few years around Sderot and some of the other communities that are very close to Gaza.

They understand that they live close to potential danger. But this is not what they've witnessed or experienced before. And what will happen because of this, what may happen yet, is unclear. We've seen, obviously, that the Israeli strikes on Gaza today. Yet what people in Israel will have witnessed, and Tel Aviv this evening will have witnessed. After those strikes, there were still another round of rockets coming from Gaza. Long-range rockets, only a few years ago, Hamas' rockets couldn't reach Tel Aviv.

BASH: Yeah.

ROBERTSON: Now they're landing in the streets of Tel Aviv. Now, the sirens go off at Ben Gurion Airport. Now you can be at Ben Gurion Airport and hear the Iron Dome protecting the airport, protecting the communities around there.

This is a problem that people have seen grow, but it seems from my perspective to have taken a quantum step today that will bring a much- heightened level of fear and concern in people's lives. And that's what we're witnessing.

BASH: A very, very experienced perspective that you have there, Nic Robertson, because of all the time that you've spent. You have incredible context. Quantum step is, I got the chills when you said that, I have to be honest with you.

Nic, thank you so much. Please do not go anywhere. We know that you are on the move and you are going to get positioned to do much more reporting. We will get back to you soon.

I now want to go to CNN's Senior International Correspondent, Sam Kiley. Sam, what strikes you from what we've seen today? And as you answer that, I'll just give a little perspective. I mean, I'm hearing from people I know in Tel Aviv who are up and down, up and down to the bomb shelter because of the sirens going off.

And it speaks to what Nic was just talking about, that this is an attack that initially happened in and around the border with Gaza, horrific attack on civilians. But it is continuing into the evening and it is continuing well into the other parts of Israel.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, Dana, this is the most complex attack that has ever been constructed by the Palestinians probably since 1948. Of course, 1973, the Yom Kippur War, that was an external force in Egypt and Syria attacking Israel, surprising them over that holiday period.

This has come almost from within imitating from the Gaza Strip, using the very heavy rocket bombardment as a cover, a distraction for what Israel had been worried about for many, many years, which is the use of tunnels to infiltrate Israeli territory that had very limited success in the past.

[15:15:17]

Suddenly being combined with air attacks using paragliders to sail over, the Gaza fence and even attacks coming from the sea. Hams able to get what maybe dozens of militants into Israeli territory conducting infantry assaults up and down the farming communities, the Kibbutz, the small villages and the large town on the edge of the Gaza Strip, capturing individuals, even overrunning areas crossing an absolutely extraordinary site.

I've been through that crossing many dozens of times. It's probably the most fortified location in the whole of the Israeli military operation in that area and yet the Palestinians were not only able to storm it but pop out the other side and attack Kibbutz's right on the edge of the Gaza Strip.

So this has been a catastrophic event from the Israeli Defense Forces perspective and now they're going to face a really serious conundrum. If Hamas claims are true that they've captured many Israeli civilians and soldiers and taken them as hostages into the Gaza Strip, they will obviously be having a terrifying and miserable time but also their safety will now weigh heavily upon the minds of military planners who would have been trying to trigger plans to go into the Gaza Strip to try to rid it in their view of the Hamas militants.

That now is becoming much more of a complex proposition. And this is part of the very deliberate plans that Hamas have been clearly organizing over at least a year. I mean it was a year ago, I was in the northern West Bank town of Jenin where a member of Palestinian Islamic jihad and the Jenin Brigades were saying that something like this was coming that they were coordinating this. And that from Israel's perspective, I think is really problematic because these battles are ongoing, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, militants are still locked in combat on the ground inside Israel and we haven't yet seen a reaction from either the West Bank or ultimately from Hezbollah in South Lebanon. Dana?

BASH: Yeah, well and that's a whole other conversation about Hezbollah and whether or not they are going to take part in this which seems to be one of the many goals that the Hamas terrorist organization has which is to spark something that will ignite a wider conflict in that region.

OK, Sam Kiley please also don't go anywhere. We are watching and following this breaking news out of Israel. We're going to take a very quick break and our breaking news will continue in a moment.

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BASH: Welcome back to our breaking news coverage. We want to show you some video of an incident, an attack that happened on the border with Gaza this morning. Hamas terrorists took over an Israeli tank and they didn't just take over an Israeli tank, if we have the video, we will show it as soon as we're ready. There you go. They took over the tank and pulled out the Israeli soldier.

This is one of many, many images, many realities of a war that Hamas started with a terror attack on Israel. This in particular is on a member of the Israeli military. Many others that we have seen are attacks and terrorizing, killing, taking hostage members of the Israeli public civilians.

This is clearly a very coordinated long-planned attack by Hamas inside Israel. And I want to talk more about that. I want to bring in James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, and now CNN Security Analyst. Director Clapper, thank you so much for joining me. First question is, knowing what you know about the intelligence network and capabilities in that region by Israel, how did this happen?

JAMES CLAPPER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, that's, you know, the question of the hour. You know, we regard Israeli intelligence services as one of the premier intelligence capabilities on the globe. Notably, Shin Bet, their domestic intelligence organization, has always been well-wired, at least in the past, in the West Bank and Hamas.

Israelis have an extensive camera surveillance system all along the Gaza. They have a capable signal intelligence capability. So it's really quite surprising, and it really took me back to see the apparent surprise. And as you said, the Israeli is getting caught flatfooted, which really took me back.

And I'm also quite impressed with the complexity of this multi- dimensional attack on the part of Hamas. We've never seen anything like that before, to include, apparently, a cyber dimension of denial of service, which adds further confusion to the Israelis and their reaction.

BASH: I just want to put this in perspective for viewers in the United States, viewers who are watching around the world, particularly in the United States. I've heard from Israelis saying that this is our 9/11. It's hard to make a comparison, but when you think about the scope of

the attack that surprised the use of civilians, the killing of civilians, and now, apparently, which is very different from 9/11, taking civilians hostage obviously as -- to use as a bartering chip for whatever it is that they want. Do you think that -- that is sort of an important way to put this in context and to view this?

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CLAPPER: Yes, unfortunately I do. I couldn't help but think back on 9/11 and of course the extensive critiques and criticisms of the intelligence community, notably by the 9/11 Commission, which cited the intelligence community for, quote, "its lack of imagination," and a failure to connect the dots.

And I couldn't help but reflect on that phraseology in this case. I think perhaps the Israelis had sort of a stereotypical image of Hamas' military capabilities and did not expect them to be able to mount such a sophisticated multi-prong attack on such a surprised basis. So I think unfortunately it is an apt comparison.

BASH: Yeah and there will be lots of time to look back, to analyze what went wrong on the intelligence but we are very much in the here and the now with sirens going off far away from the border with Gaza inside Israel. I mean we heard from our reporter Hadas Gold that was even happening earlier in Jerusalem and certainly I've been in touch with people in Tel Aviv happening there as well.

Given that, if you were the Director of National Intelligence right now and you were in the situation room with President Biden, what would you be -- what would you be telling him? What would your advice be?

CLAPPER: Well, hopefully I would have benefit -- I would have benefit if I were in that situation of some extensive conversations, dialogue with Israeli intelligence, my opposite number. I think probably all the U.S. intelligence community is reaching out to counterparts and connections and colleagues in Israel to try to understand their perspective and also, of course, what we could do to help them, particularly from an intelligence perspective.

They didn't know it was kind of late. So I would be sharing whatever insights I gained from those kinds of conversations and dialogue with Israeli intelligence counterparts and would be teeing up ways that we could assist the Israelis.

BASH: Director James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence and CNN Analyst, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise and the experience that you have, putting this all-in perspective for all of us. Thank you so much.

And we're going to have much more on the breaking news unfolding right now in Israel. We'll be back in a moment.

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BASH: Fear and terror are spreading across Israel tonight as rockets continue to rain down on civilians following a surprise attack from the terrorist group Hamas.

That was a hospital in Israel's southern district of Ashkelon hit with explosions earlier in the afternoon. The video appears to show Hamas fighters kidnapping, this one you're looking at now, kidnapping Israeli civilians, taking them hostage.

One woman described to our affiliate station in Israel, the terror they are facing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Suddenly out of nowhere shots are coming in. They started shooting in every direction. And I took the car keys and just drove and started moving forward to get out of the shots, out of the shots. And at some point they overtook us. We were overtaken by the shooters. They started shooting at our vehicles. We got out of the vehicles. I didn't keep driving. We took cover.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Israeli officials say at least 200 people are dead and nearly 1,500 others wounded.

Let's get some analysis and some reporting on what is happening there. I want to start with my colleague here, Oren Liebermann. Oren, you spent a lot of time on the ground reporting for CNN in Israel. You are very much in touch with sources there. What should our audience know right now?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: I want to emphasize what we heard Nic Robertson say earlier, where this is a quantum step in a different direction. And that is an incredibly important point to make. I have seen many rounds in my nearly six years there of fighting between Israel and Gaza. These are two opponents who know each other well, who stare across the border at each other just hundreds of meters apart.

So Israel is supposed to know how Hamas operates, moves, thinks, and Hamas does the same for Israel. And yet, there is apparently now a gaping hole in that that Hamas noticed and exploited. In the repeated rounds of escalation we have seen, there was almost an unwritten rule of the road. And yet, as Nic Robertson pointed out, and as we are very much seeing, that has been thrown out.

I want to quote here a line I have seen a couple of Israeli ministers say at this point. "Mashihaya lohiyeh (ph) (foreign language), what was, will not be, a way of saying that whatever the arrangements were before and whatever sort of agreements they could come to between Israel and Hamas -- Israel and Hamas using Turkey or Egypt as mediators, that is in the past.

The question, what does Israel do now, I think it is safe to say they are very much at the beginning of their response. Does that include a ground incursion? Does it just include aerial assault? That is a question for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet. What is clear, and I'll point this out, is that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart and promised not only a little bit of support, but ongoing support over the coming days.

[15:35:12]

And perhaps that includes what we even saw in 2014 when Israel requested and was able to tap into U.S. Defense Department stockpiles in Israel. It all depends on this point what a prolonged campaign is to Netanyahu, whether that's 5 days, 50 days or more, that is what remains to be seen here. As Israel is still trying to figure out what to do as it's reeling from this.

BASH: Can you repeat that line that you're hearing from the various ministers inside Israel? Ma --

LIEBERMANN: "Mashihaya lohiyeh (ph)," what was will not be. A reference to the sort of arrangements and written agreements or rather unwritten agreements that they could reach after escalation to get back to a ceasefire. And even if for Israel it was a never unacknowledged ceasefire, they would always say if the rockets are quiet will be met with quiet. That is now the past. Israeli ministers moving on from that.

BASH: OK, so from a military point of view, Col. Leighton, what does that tell you when it's not just Israel who's saying, you know, all bets are off. That's how we would say it in America. But also perhaps what one of the goals of Hamas was here, which is to pull in other parts of the region, maybe even an including Hezbollah, which has how many rockets?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yeah, well, they say about 150,000 in southern Lebanon, supposedly buried there, or at least deployed in that region and ready to attack Israel possibly. So what you're looking at is the possibility of a major conflagration in the Middle East if this is not contained.

So this is exceptionally serious because, Dana, what you're looking at is not only getting the other groups like Hezbollah involved, but also Iran, which has significant ties to Hezbollah. You also have the Arab nations, and many of them have at least elements within their population that are extremely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. So this could escalate in a very wild way if it's not carefully contained.

BASH: OK, everybody stand by and just to add and a reminder of what Prime Minister Netanyahu said earlier, "Citizens of Israel, we are at war, not in an operation or in rounds, but at war."

We're going to talk a lot more about what that means and what is happening on the ground as night is very much there in Israel, it's very dark and it is not over. Stay with us.

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[15:42:02]

BASH: Welcome back to CNN's special coverage of this breaking news, Hamas terror attack, multiple attacks, continuing attacks on Israel.

And I want to read this new statement that we just got from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said, "What happened today has never been seen in Israel. We will take mighty vengeance for this black day."

He also said, "Israel will reach every place Hamas is hiding. I tell Gaza's people to leave those places now. I tell Hamas, you are responsible for well-being of captives. Israel will settle the score with anyone who harms them."

That again is a brand-new statement from Israel's Prime Minister. I want to bring in Kimberly Dozier, a longtime national security reporter who has seen a lot of war. And you certainly have been in this region, Kimberly. What are your thoughts and what are you hearing from your sources?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, watching this play out, I'm reminded of the first and the second Intifadas or uprisings. Both of those started from what seemed like minor incidents at the time. The first one from a car crashing into two vehicles full of Palestinian workers and killing and injuring many. The second one was sparked off by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Of course, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is adjacent to or on top of a very sacred Jewish space. It's the site of the two previous Jewish temples that were destroyed.

So that also kicked off a major uprising. It seemed in this case what the Hamas fighters are hoping is that through the violent, horrifically successful nature of this attack, they will inspire Palestinians across the West Bank who are angry with the Israeli security forces treatment and regional actors will also step in.

The risk is that as we've all been talking all day, saying, you know, Israel will likely invade Gaza in some manner, shape or form to root out the attackers, to root out the network. If that attack goes too far as perceived by outside actors, that's when you could see what Israel calls the Ring of Fire around it attacking.

Hezbollah with its 100,000 plus missiles to the North in Lebanon, Syrian militants with missiles also supplied by Iran according to Middle East officials. So Israel could be confronted with attacks on all sides.

BASH: Yeah.

DOZIER: At this point, it's just internal. But we've got days and weeks of this conflict to play out.

BASH: It is 10:44 p.m. in Gaza City, you were looking at a live picture of Gaza City. And as we do, Oren, just again, to come back to what the Israeli Prime Minister just said moments ago, that what we saw today has never been seen in Israel, and we will take mighty vengeance for this black day?

[15:45:20]

LIEBERMANN: More than 200 Israelis killed in a period of several hours and hundreds, if not more than a thousand more wounded. In my nearly six years there, we were never even close to numbers like that. And that gives you an idea of just how seriously Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu view this.

The question, of course, is what is his next step? How does he respond? They've already carried out airstrikes hitting terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. Kim, mentioned a ground incursion. I think there are a lot of people who think that's likely, but that's an incredible risk in and of itself. That is difficult urban warfare in one of the most densely populated areas on earth where Hamas has the advantage.

In Gaza, you are stepping into that and putting your troops into that, where they have a clear advantage as opposed to in Israel, which we saw this morning, where you're supposed to have the advantage. That's a very difficult decision, and then you have to figure out what's your goal there. Are you trying to decapitate Hamas? That too is incredibly difficult to try to accomplish.

BASH: OK, stand by. We're going to sneak in another break. We have a lot more breaking news. We have reporters on the ground getting the latest information, and we're going to bring that to you. We'll be right back.

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[15:50:56]

BASH: You're looking at live pictures out of Gaza. It is 10:50 p.m. there, and there is the tension there. It's indescribable, as we're hearing from our reporters and others on the ground in that region. We want to give you a better sense of the geography of where things are happening and what is happening.

CNN's Oren Liebermann is with us, as is retired U.S. Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, and they're going to break down where this is unfolding. Oren and Colonel?

LIEBERMANN: Dana, thank you. So Col. Leighton, let's focus in on what we're looking at, and we can bring up a map here. When we talk about the Palestinian territories, we're generally talking about the West Bank and Gaza. But here we're just focused on Gaza, where Israel controls the sea, the northern border, and the eastern border. How could this have happened to catch Israel so off guard?

LEIGHTON: Yeah, that's a really great question, Oren, because what you're looking at here is this really small area of territory. It's so densely populated, as you mentioned earlier. But the fact of the matter is that the Palestinians, the Hamas guerrillas, were really looking at how to circumvent Israeli intelligence. They knew that they had to get off the phones. They knew they had to, in essence, use couriers and other more primitive means to communicate with each other.

And when they did that, they were able to, it looks like, prevent the Israelis from really learning what they were up to. And that, I think, gave them the element of surprise in this case.

LIEBERMANN: You say primitive means, and yet Israel is known for its ability, frankly, its spying technology, whether that's from the air or signals interception. Was this Hamas simply going low-tech to beat Israel's ability to pick up on any of this? What must have been a large cell to carry this out?

LEIGHTON: Yeah, I think it was. And what's really interesting about, this is the fact that, you know, when you go into this area and you look at all of the different elements that are right here, you can see that Israel has really flanked by so many different rivals at this particular point in time.

And former enemies, some of them are current enemies. And the very fact that they were able to do this, I think, indicates that they went low-tech in order to prevent high-tech means of detection. And that allowed them to go in, and in essence, take the Israelis by surprise in a way that they weren't expecting. And in many ways, you think of surprises as being something that you don't expect, but this is even more than that. It gets to a deeper level than that.

LIEBERMANN: President Joe Biden warned other parties not to get involved in this conflict. What and who and where was he referring to with that comment as we look around the borders of the state of Israel?

LEIGHTON: Yes, so one of the key things, I think, one of the key players is right here in Lebanon. You know, when you look at the forces that are at play here, you look at Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, which is off the map on the other side here. You also look at forces in Syria. Many of them have previously gone after Israel as well.

And then you look, of course, at the West Bank, which has the PLO, and you have the non-Hamas entities, right there, working in a way that can also array themselves against Israel and could potentially, in sympathy with Hamas, have an uprising here that could adversely affect everything that's going on in Israel proper.

LIEBERMANN: Col. Leighton, thank you.

BASH: Oren and Col. Leighton, thank you so much for that. We are going to have much more on our breaking news straight ahead. CNN is on the ground in Israel. We're going to have a live report, next.

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[15:58:51]

BASH: I'm Dana Bash in Washington. We continue our special coverage this hour, Israel at war. Its civilians under attack.

At sunrise the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel. Tiny children crouching in terror. You see it there and you hear the sirens screaming and rockets raining down on civilians that is happening in areas all across Israel.

Make no mistake, the civilians are very much a target here. This video appears to show Hamas fighters taking civilian hostages. And there are reports Hamas is taking hostages across the border back to Gaza.

The timing appears motivated cruel and calculating the attack comes on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War when Arab states blitzed Israel.

[16:00:00]