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New Explosions Seen Over Gaza; Israel Media: At Least 600 Israelis Killed In Hamas Attack; Israeli Official: Americans Among Those Taken Hostage. Aired 1-2p ET

Aired October 08, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:39]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us here with this breaking news coverage here at CNN. I'm Fredricka Whitfield in Atlanta. I'll be joined by my colleague Anderson Cooper in Tel Aviv.

Right now, I want to show you these images just now coming in with these breaking news. We're seeing pictures from just moments ago in Gaza where explosions are lighting up the night sky. Right now, it's 8:00 p.m. in Israel and sporadic fighting has continued throughout the day following yesterday's shocking attacks by Hamas over air, land and sea. And now, some 30 hours or so after the initial attacks, now we're seeing new images here of new explosions.

Officials say at least 600 Israelis have been killed since yesterday's attacks. More than 2,000 people wounded overall. Israel's cabinet now officially declaring war on Hamas one day after Israel's prime minister said, quote, we are at war.

Sporadic fighting has been seen throughout the day and now these latest lighting up the sky, explosions taking place. One gun battle was captured on video by people caught in the cross fire. Take a look.

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(SIREN)

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WHITFIELD: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the U.S. is trying to confirm reports that Americans are among those killed. Americans are also believed to be among the scores of hostages who were snatched and are being held in Gaza.

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RON DERMER, ISRAEL'S MINISTER OF STRATEGIC AFFAIRS: I think it's scores of hostages. I can tell you there's also American hostages as part of that number, as well. I don't want to get into a specific number.

But these are women. They're children. They're elderly. They're Holocaust survivors. This is sick.

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WHITFIELD: An Israeli military spokesman told CNN that they will do anything to bring hostages back to Israel. One mother told CNN's Jake Tapper earlier this morning that her children called as they were being kidnapped by Hamas. All she could do was listen.

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ISRAELI MOTHER: I heard on line, on the phone, the dear break, I heard terrorists speaking in Arabic to my teenagers. And the youngest saying, I'm too young to go. They're 16 and 12, so very, very hard to hear.

And the phone went off, the line went off. That was the last time I heard from them. It was a very, very hard day. Many, many people from our place, and other places were taken.

They took babies. They took 2-year-olds, 5-year-olds, mothers, just innocent citizens. They did nothing wrong. They were just sleeping in their beds. Even war has rules. They just don't have any morals.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: That kind of experience repeated many times and being conveyed. Israel is striking back at Hamas targets in Gaza. More than 300 Palestinians have been killed and 1,900 wounded.

Secretary Blinken speaking on CNN earlier, pledging U.S. support to Israel.

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ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: Right now, the entire focus is supporting Israel and making sure it has what it needs as President Biden pledged to Prime Minister Netanyahu when they spoke yesterday. That's what it needs to deal with this attack from Hamas, to make sure that it has control over its own territory.

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WHITFIELD: CNN's Anderson Cooper is joining me right now from Tel Aviv.

Anderson, what have you seen since you've arrived?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Fredricka, what we have seen over the last 37 hours in Israel is unprecedented, extraordinary even for people who have covered the situation here for decades.

[13:05:10]

I've been coming here for 30 years. I've never seen anything like this security situation that we have seen over the last 37 hours.

In Tel Aviv here tonight at 8:00, there are a lot of people waiting and wondering what the night will bring. Gaza city is that way, if there are rockets coming toward Tel Aviv, they will come from that direction and you will see them over my shoulder.

But there are offensive military operations going on by Israel right now. There are a number of sites along the border where we believe there is still fighting going on on the ground. The security situation here is very fluid.

I'm joined now by Clarissa Ward who is on the Gaza border as well as Nic Robertson who is in Ashkelon for us tonight.

Clarissa, let me start with you. You've spent a lot of time here. Have you ever seen anything like this and what are you seeing from your location?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Definitely have never seen anything like this, Anderson. It is a very tense night here. We're just outside Ashkelon, the Iron Dome has been activated. There just has been a barrage of rockets coming in.

There is military hardware pretty much everywhere you look, you can see behind me, some armored personnel carriers. As we've been driving along the roads near the Gaza border there have been scores and scores of tanks, reservists and troops all very much on the move and all very much on a stay of high alert.

We actually had to turn around at one point because we came near to an area where there was clearly a firefight going on. And this just underscores how real the danger is here. It's just not a question of rockets. It's also a question of Hamas fighters who are still inside Israel, who continue to be able to infiltrate and the battles that Israeli forces are still waging to try to got rid of them altogether, seal off that border completely.

We also saw a huge amount of building equipment be moved to try to repair the damage to the Erez border crossing.

So, certainly, a lot of activity going on here tonight, Anderson, and tensions very high, very, very, very few civilians out on the streets at all, but an awful lot of military activity.

COOPER: And, Nic, Ashkelon is a city used to deter incoming rockets. It is -- it is a regular fact of life for the people in that community, but what they have seen over the last 37 hours, having Hamas fighters on the ground seemingly moving around for hours and still as Clarissa was saying still perhaps on the ground, still perhaps being able to infiltrate.

What's the situation there right now?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah. There were four Hamas militants detained outside of Ashkelon this morning. We've actually moved, Anderson. We are just close to Sderot where we've spent most of the day, just a few miles away from the Gaza border. You might be able to hear some of the explosions in Gaza that are happening behind me.

But I'm in a field, the bright lights, these are all ambulances. This is a volunteer medical corps that are here set up in this field and they've been dealing with all of the victims of the terrorists of the Hamas attacks over the last couple of days.

There's more work going on down here. A lot of lights and a lot of medics in that area.

But let me introduce you to Dr. Gensler.

Dr. Gensler --

DR. SHLOMO GENSLER, VOLUNTEER DOCTOR, HELMSLEY CHARITABLE TRUST: Hi.

ROBERTSON: Thank you for joining us.

GENSLER: My pleasure.

ROBERTSON: Tell us, what are you doing here and what have you been seeing? I mean, you've been working nonstop since this began?

GENSLER: OK. So yesterday, we came down -- we came down over here to the area of Sderot. There was not a lot of information about what was going on and basically you just encountered carnage as soon as we got down here, and we started treating nonstop injured people.

So, initially, when we got here we came to this staging point and unsure where it was safe further on. We continued to go, as little as possible, inch by inch to see where we were going and then we encountered a lot of dead bodies throughout the way and people just executed on the side of the road and then we went basically down to -- and continued further down until the area of the fighting.

ROBERTSON: We know this has been horrific. You're the front line guys that are seeing it and understanding. In your line of profession, you see casualties all the time. You're used to that. Anything prepare you for what you witnessed here?

GENSLER: So what I would say is the brutality that I saw here, I've been by many terror attacks in the past, brutality that I saw here and the lack of compassion for other human beings was unparalleled. I -- there were little children executed. There were people just burned alive, hit by RPGs. People kept hostage.

ROBERTSON: RPGs, rocket propelled grenades. Not guns they fired, big rockets at people.

GENSLER: They were firing -- they were firing handheld rockets.

[13:10:01]

They were coming in in motor bikes and it was consistent attacking. They were sneaking over random areas and coming into people's houses and then executing people in their houses. And then also --

ROBERTSON: When you say executing, I mean, without being too graphic, what do you mean?

GENSLER: So I can say from one situation they have a cousin that was a party that was on the border --

ROBERTSON: That big outdoor party that Hamas went right into it and shot a bunch of people.

GENSLER: Not only shot. They stabbed, slaughtered, cut people's throats and many -- she happened to have escaped it alive, but the trauma that was seen there. I'll tell you one story that really hit home with me where I started to cry yesterday. I was treating people in critical condition and intubating them and doing chest compressions all the time when I met two kids that just had -- were held hostage, somehow were in a closet for 12 hours and finally escaped. The army came in and got them out.

And after that, they said to me, my parents -- we saw our parents get killed in front of me. I'm hungry. I haven't eaten the last 12 hours. That thing -- to see that brutality and understand that these are little children that are suffering like this, I can't -- I can't like the amount of crying and, emotional, this is going to take a lot of time to process through, but I -- to see that humans can act like that to another type of people is unreal. So, I -- yeah.

ROBERTSON: How are you coping with it? You're a professional, I know, but this is of a scale terribly worse.

GENSLER: This definitely is the scale of terribly worse. It is something that I've seen quite a bit of it in the past, but this brings it to a new level. It will take days to like process in.

ROBERTSON: And you are out in the field here. I mean, we're hearing explosions going off in Gaza. We're seeing the Iron Dome rounds flying out. There are rockets coming in here sometimes.

You are out in the open. You're still exposed to danger. What do you -- tell me what you've been doing today. You're going to the front lines essentially.

GENSLER: So, we were basically at the -- we were at the front lines. We saw a missile right next to us, there was a rocket that landed near an apartment building and blew up, like and we were -- we were close, but not close enough, but there was consistent rocket fire all the time.

We saw the Iron Dome hitting and intercepting in most of the areas. Some did fall through, but that was, you know, for the majority, they were able to intercept, but we hear consistent gun fire and then you would hear all of the time -- you weren't sure if you heard at some point we got a bullet go off and everyone just ducks and drops to the ground. So there's definitely a lot of high tension.

ROBERTSON: And this isn't over yet. I mean, there's still operation -- GENSLER: It's way not over.

ROBERTSON: It's way not over.

GENSLER: So, it's not over in the sense like -- listen, there's still -- you can hear what's going on there, but beyond, I can't comment on anything.

ROBERTSON: You're still getting -- you're still getting casualties.

GENSLER: We're still getting casualties. We're still treating people. We're like, basically, what we've been doing is going up to essentially where the army needs or any hostages that got freed, and we're basically taking them out to meet up either to go on a helicopter or to the other organization.

ROBERTSON: And the condition of the people that you're meeting up with? The hostages, what are you finding?

GENSLER: So, we're finding everything. I've had like a 90-year-old woman with a bullet wound to her breast.

ROBERTSON: A 90-year-old woman.

GENSLER: They're shooting everyone. No mercy at all. A 90-year-old woman with a bullet wound to her breast.

I've had -- I've had people -- their RPG hit close by and they had terrible wounds and had to, like, decompress their chest from that, but beyond that, there's like a -- every type of injury you can imagine. People lost limbs. People bullet wounds all over the place. It was --

ROBERTSON: But you're also getting people. You're doing good work. You're saving people and you're helping get them to a safer place.

GENSLER: So, one thing that I will say about organizations these are volunteers willing to risk their lives to go save people. And many people are over here, there were shrapnel and bullet holes in some of our ambulances because they are like sometimes they come out and they start shooting even where we get to. So, that's a risk that we're willing to take to save people, and I can say we have saved I believe thousands of lives in the last day.

ROBERTSON: Dr. Gensler, thank you very much.

GENSLER: Thank you so much.

ROBERTSON: We will stay here with you tonight and watch your good work.

GENSLER: Thank you so much. Thank you for coming.

ROBERTSON: Thank you. Thank you.

Anderson, this field hospital in the danger zone still, they're going to keep working through the night and through the day tomorrow and this is their mission to help people and this is still an area as you've been hearing from Clarissa, this is still an area where combat is going on, and their help is needed -- Anderson.

COOPER: Nic, we'll come back to you in a little bit.

I want to go back to Clarissa on the border with Gaza.

Clarissa, one of the things that makes this so different and there are many things and it's not just people thinking about their own safety, about their loved ones in shelters and wondering, rockets are coming in. It's the hostage situations. This mass taking of hostages.

We have seen Israelis taken hostage before, Gilad Shalit, other Israeli soldiers, but I don't recall ever seeing anything like this, the sheer number, certainly it seems an orchestrated strategy of hostage-taking.

[13:15:06]

And that's something the Israeli authorities now are going to have to deal with in addition to considering offensive operations on the ground in Gaza.

WARD: Absolutely, Anderson. I think that really complicates things for a number of reasons. First of all, you have the extraordinary emotional impact of this hostage situation, the fact that so many people are looking for their loved ones, the fact that they don't know if they're alive, if they may be dead. The fact that no one really seems to have a good grip on just how many there are.

We know it's a lot, though, and this will certainly complicate efforts when you're talking about a potential ground offensive or something to do with trying to really route out Hamas once and for all. How can you do that when you have potentially dozens of Israeli and also other nationalities as well, I should add, hostages being held in undisclosed locations in safe houses throughout this densely populated area?

So it does become very complicated, and as I mentioned before, it's a very visceral, powerful tool of instilling terror and fear into people who are desperately looking for their loved ones, looking for answers who are, many of them still, too afraid to leave their homes.

You walk around some of these area, Anderson, there's nobody out on the streets even when it's quiet because until many people hear the word from Israeli forces that all of these Hamas militants have been successfully killed or captured, they are simply unwilling to leave the shelters where so many of them are still hunkering in place.

COOPER: Yeah. I mean, the videos we have seen of elderly women, people at a concert, children being taken hostage and paraded through the streets, it's -- it is sickening.

We're going to take a short break and. Our coverage continues live from Israel, from the region and Fredricka as well. We'll be right back.

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COOPER: And welcome back.

We are coming to you live from Tel Aviv, obviously, a city on edge. The entire country of Israel on edge tonight, shocked, stunned at the surprise attack that took place starting around 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning here in Israel. It is now in the 8:00 hour Sunday night in Israel and there are still -- there's still fighting going on, on the ground in areas in a number of locations, we are told, near the Gaza border in the south -- southern part of Israel, and obviously, offensive operations.

We've seen explosions. You are looking at those images from "Reuters", explosions happening inside Gaza as Israeli forces and Israeli artillery planes are firing into Gaza City, a tightly packed city of some 2 million people.

Israel has put out warning of civilians in Gaza to move away from these area and there are not a lot of places to go in Gaza ruled by Hamas organization and the United States has declared a terrorist organization and we've seen them strike terror into the heart of Israel in the way we have not seen probably since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and even that is a rough comparison.

We've seen large-scale hostage-taking of elderly people, young people, just sickening videos that of people being shoved into vehicles and bloodied and hands tied behind their back and being paraded through the streets in Gaza as crowds jubilantly rejoiced over -- over this.

I want to go to our Sam Kiley, who's monitoring events out of London.

Sam, the other big part of this potentially would be, as becoming a wider conflict, would be the involvement of Hezbollah from Lebanon.

I covered the war -- the fight against Hezbollah back in 2006. I was on the ground here for six weeks. That was a difficult, difficult fight.

Talk a little bit about Hezbollah. We have seen some rocket fire from them, but so far, not large scale. Talk about what that would mean to this conflict?

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Hezbollah's reaction today is part of a ritual in a sense that one could almost have predicted in detail in which they struck at Israeli positions in the Shebaa Farms, contested territory that is occupied by Israel. It might be Lebanese, it might Syrian territory. It is claimed by Hezbollah to be Lebanese territory and that's where they attacked Israeli troops. The troops fired some artillery back and then it went quiet because I think that was Hezbollah officials have essentially said this was a symbolic response in support to the Palestinian efforts as they would see them out of Gaza.

Now, the Hamas leadership and what is critical is they are linked to Hezbollah via Tehran, via the Iranians. Now, the extent to which the Hamas leadership will be acting on or using the weapons, money and intelligence provided for Tehran, I think we will learn more about that in the future and whether or not we are in phase one really of an Iranian operation, a conspiracy theorist would argue that the next phase would be and we've seen Hamas call for this in the west bank and occupied territories, perhaps among Israeli Arabs and at that point, perhaps, Hezbollah could get involved.

But Hezbollah and the Lebanon have been warned by Israel many times in the past that any significant attack from that location will be met with utterly devastating force and that is a dangerous calculation for Hezbollah to make, but the extent to which Iranians get involved and are blamed by Israel, for example, if the Israelis would go into a ground offensive into Gaza could provoke widespread reaction.

[13:25:01]

We've started to see a little bit of the perhaps -- the embers of this conflagration in Egypt with the murder of two Israelis and their Egyptian guide by local Egyptian in Alexandria.

COOPER: Sam, appreciate that.

I want to go quickly to Nic Robertson who is still in the area, around Ashkelon.

Nic, did you say you are in Ashkelon or did you move to Sderot?

ROBERTSON: Yeah. Anderson, we are in a field just outside Sderot very close to the Gaza border. This is a field out in the open countryside and this is the place where medics are gathering so they can get out and support people.

COOPER: So, Nic, we all know what Gaza City is like, the difficulty for Israeli forces operating there. They pulled out a long time ago in the mid-2000s. Hamas has taken over and there are no other forces that can really oppose Hamas there. There's also Islamic Jihad operating there.

Talk a little bit about what the calculations are now that Israel has to make in how to respond and we're seeing the images from moments ago, large explosions of buildings being taken down in Gaza.

But it's very difficult. Hamas is firing from often from residential buildings, from buildings where people live. It's very difficult for Israel to certainly go on the ground there to go street by street.

ROBERTSON: Yeah, ground incursions typically for Israel and the last one I believe was about 10 years that we've witnessed here. They're costly for the Israelis in terms of potentially lives lost of troops and they are quite costly for Palestinians in terms of casualties because Hamas hides in the civilian population. It's a densely populated civilian neighborhood. So to achieve the goals that the prime minister has set out, Prime Minister Netanyahu has set out to take out the leadership and the whole Hamas structures means going into the neighborhoods in Gaza. And that's very difficult to do without collateral damage and we've seen this when there hasn't been incursions, when it's just been air strikes by Israel to take out Hamas positions when Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel.

There is an international -- there is an international condemnation of the Palestinian depths which puts international political pressure on the Israeli prime minister of the day to stop the hostilities. This is a magnitude different of much more complex situation for the prime minister.

Not only will he face that international pressure as he goes after Hamas leadership hiding out among the Gaza civilian population, but there's also going to be internal pressure because Hamas has so many Israeli citizens hostage and it is very clear that Hamas will exploit that to the maximum degree, putting them on videos, putting them -- showing them under duress, threatening potentially if there's a ground incursion that those hostages will be killed.

The scenarios are horrible to contemplate, but Hamas can and will likely play this out over a long phase. They've never been in a strategically strong position as this facing Israel because of the leverage of the hostages. So, at a political level, this is difficult. At a military level, this is something that the IDF can do, but ultimately they get into those civilian neighborhoods and there's a limit to how far they can go without causing unintended Palestinian casualties and without taking inordinate risks themselves because they enter neighborhoods that are not known to them, they are known to Hamas, and they can be booby-trapped and the buildings can be collapsed on them.

It is -- it is a frightening for anyone here, scenario that it is presented, but politically for the prime minister not to exact a deeper, lasting blow on Hamas would be not to do that would be -- would be very difficult, as well. It is such, such an awful position to contemplate right now, Anderson.

COOPER: Nic, we should also point out that Hamas has shown the willingness to hold on to hostages for years. Gilad Shalit was held for years, eventually traded for large number of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. There's no telling how long these people may be held for. I mean, this is -- we've never seen, I think, this many hostages taken at once.

[13:30:04]

The ripple effects of it are hard to -- I mean, I flew over here today and there were people on the plane who had loved ones that had been taken.

ROBERTSON: Yeah. Women, children, old people have been taken. Some of them are injured already. The way that Hamas can play this out, I mean, Hamas ultimately wants to exist, wants to be a political and military threat in perpetuity to Israel and the longer they play out their control and holding of those hostages, therefore the longer they think they will be able to hold back any potential Israeli response.

It's having to make this decision is an absolute poison chalice for the prime minister because there is no easy or right answer. If he holds back because Hamas says we might release hostages they will play that game ad infinitum just to secure their own existence five years, 10 years, 15 years. As you say, they can actually look at how many Palestinian prisoners they exchanged for that one soldier who was hugely valued by the family and the prime minister and he was low ranked.

Now, they have many, many more hostages. This is a situation where Hamas holds a lot of cards and how Prime Minister Netanyahu seizes back the initiative and can he seize back the initiative here and that isn't clear and potentially this is going to involve multiple nations engaging with the Turkish prime minister, Qatar often gets involved, Egypt often gets involved, can they engage and help Israel here?

I would say the situation is too dire and too hard for them to be able to resolve it. Hamas is going to want to keep these hostages absolutely as long as possible because that, you if will, you know, is the thing that will protect them the longest, Anderson.

COOPER: Yeah. Nic, I want to go to Natasha Bertrand in Washington, D.C. with the Biden administration's response.

Natasha, what are -- what are you hearing?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yeah, Anderson.

So, the Biden administration has just announced a pretty significant force posture change in the Middle East. The secretary of defense announcing that for the purposes of deterrence, in order to deter additional threats to Israel and the region, he has directed the movement of the USS Gerald Ford carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean and it includes U.S. Navy aircraft as well, as a guided missile cruisers, as well as guided destroyers as well as additional fighter aircraft squadron.

So, all of this is being moved into the region again as a deterrence measure. In addition to that, the Defense Department has announced they will be providing additional munitions to the Israeli defense forces to help support their fight against Hamas which the Israelis said they expect to be a long and hard fight. So the Biden administration making clear here that they are moving to support Israel fast and in any way they possibly can and showing a sign of strength, a show of strength there in the region to deter any potential future attackers.

Now, President Biden spoke to Netanyahu today and he did tell him that all of is assistance was on the way, but pretty significant force posture changes in the Middle East just announced in the last few minutes by the secretary of state of defense again as part of a broader deterrence in the region, Anderson.

COOPER: And did they give any time line of how quickly that would occur?

BERTRAND: Well, they said that it is going to happen within the next few days with regard to the munitions that are going to be sent over there. They said it was going to happen pretty soon. Of course, you know, it remains to be seen just how fast those forces can actually get to the region, but they are not far, so this expected to happen pretty imminently, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Natasha Bertrand, appreciate it.

I want to go to Priscilla Alvarez who's at the White House for us.

Priscilla, what -- I know there was a phone call between Netanyahu and President Biden. What are you hearing?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Anderson.

The two spoke this morning and part of what they discuss side what you heard there from Natasha that there is additional assistance on the way and that will continue to be the case over the coming days. But they also talked about the hostages, the taking of hostages and the president in this readout went on to emphasize that there's no justification whatsoever for terrorism and all countries must stand united in the face of such brutal atrocities. The president also reaffirming to Netanyahu that there is intense engagement by the United States over the last 24 hours to support Israel.

Now, of course, the question, Anderson is what this assistance will look like moving forward. You heard there, some of the actions already being taken by the Defense Department.

[13:35:02]

But one of the realities that officials face here in D.C. is the dysfunction in Congress and what can be done without a sitting House speaker and what would require congressional authorization and that is still an open question and a senior administration official told CNN that this is a, quote, unique situation. And they are trying to sort out behind the scenes what else is achievable here. That has really been part of the effort here behind the scenes by officials as trying to determine what kind of military aid they can provide and what assistance and what requests Israel is making.

So, all of this is still very much unfolding and for now, we know that some assistance is already on the way and President Biden with Netanyahu assuring him that there is more to come in the coming days and that he will stay in close touch with him as all of this unfolds, Anderson.

COOPER: Priscilla Alvarez from the White House, thanks very much.

We're going to take a short break. Our live coverage from Israel continues in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [13:40:16]

COOPER: And welcome back to our continuing live coverage from Israel. I'm Anderson Cooper in Tel Aviv.

Tonight, I want to go to Clarissa Ward who is along -- who's in Israel along the border with Gaza. Obviously, Clarissa, we have seen just in the last hour that we've been on the air and before that large-scale bombardments inside Gaza.

What are you hearing about what's going on there?

WARD: So I would say about 40 minutes ago, Anderson, we were hearing a lot of activity in the skies, a lot of planes, a lot of strikes taking place in the Gaza Strip.

We were also hearing a lot of rockets, incoming and coming over this area and you can see them in the distance and the iron dome activating, and it has been really just a barrage.

It started to come down a little bit no although having said that I can actually hear some booms in the distance and certainly, you are not seeing any civilians out on the streets at all, Anderson, but what you are seeing is a huge amount of military activity. You can probably see behind me here, you've got some armored personnel carriers, but just driving around the roads by the border with Gaza, a huge amount of weaponry, a huge amount of military hardware and a huge amount of troops who are presumably being put in place, whether that's for some kind of an incursion or whether that's for the ongoing battles that are still taking place to try to be rid, once and for all, of these Hamas militants who have successfully infiltrated through the Gaza border.

We also saw a lot of heavy building materials, trying to repair the Erez Crossing, the huge breach where so many Hamas fighters were able to come into the country. We saw fire fights going on.

This is still very much an active situation with the IDF worrying about not just what they're going to do inside Gaza and how they're going to get those hostages back and how they're going to deal with the problem of Hamas' leadership inside the Gaza Strip, but first and foremost, how to deal with the situation here in southern Israel which is still incredibly tense, volatile and dangerous, Anderson.

COOPER: And how much do we know about what is actually going on on the ground inside Israel? Because obviously we're seeing the images from Gaza. Do we know -- is the border now with Gaza secure or are all the points of infiltration, have they all been sealed up or are there actually more Gaza militants crossing over or is it just some that may still be on the ground hiding or fighting on the ground inside Israel? Do we know?

WARD: Yeah. It's a really good question and it's a very difficult one to answer. The answer that we're hearing from the Hamas side, they're claiming that they're still being able to infiltrate more militants across that border. We certainly saw those building materials heading toward that part of

the border which presumably means there is a gap in it that needs to be rebuilt. However, I would say we saw enormous military presence on the ground found out for miles and miles on end, checkpoints everywhere.

So you do have the sense, the Israeli military is doing everything in its power to try to lock down this area, but as I said, we literally almost drove up to a firefight taking place on a main highway, and it gives you a sense of just how difficult it is to deal with when you have a few militants, a dozen militants and we simply don't know how many who can fade into the background, lay low and then come out guns blazing.

It's very difficult for any military to fight against that kind of guerilla insurgency tactics and it is absolutely terrifying for the ordinary people. Earlier today, there was an incident on, again, a main road where a gunman came out and just started opening up fire on civilian vehicles. The Israeli military was able to deal with the situation and kill the gunman in question, but this is still happening, still going on, and as a result, this is still a place that is very much on edge.

We were told in no uncertain terms, we tried to visit the area right by the border, the Kibbutz Re'im, where the dance festival had taken place which turned into the scene of a horrific massacre and mass hostage taking scenario, and we did manage to get near to it, but Israeli soldiers saw us coming to a certain point. They were standing ready to fire potentially. They said to us, you absolutely must get out of here, turn around right now.

[13:45:04]

So, very clear that they're not messing around here. This is still a very volatile and dangerous situation, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Clarissa, we're going to take a short break. Our coverage from this region continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: And welcome back to our continuing live coverage of the fight in Israel.

Anat Sultan-Dadon now joins us from Washington.

Anat, if you can, I understand you just were on a call, a briefing from the IDF, the Israeli defense forces about the situation on the ground. Can you talk a little bit about what the latest is from their perspective?

ANAT SULTAN-DADON, CONSUL GENERAL OF ISRAEL TO THE SOUTHEAST U.S.: I will just say I'm joining you from Atlanta, and the current situation is that the IDF is working in order to restore its safety to our communities in southern Israel.

[13:50:06]

We are working to still take care of our many injured, and we are working in order to address the serious threat and the terror attacks from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and the other terror organizations.

COOPER: In terms of your role, what you have been working on, do you have any information about how many people have been taken hostage? Are you hearing from families? Do you have any idea of how many people -- how many Americans may have been taken hostage?

SULTAN-DADON: We know we are currently looking at over 600 who have been murdered. We know of dozens who have been taken hostage, women, children, elderly. We are still assessing the details. We have many missing persons still. And we do know there are foreign nationals, dual nationals as well as those missing, among those murdered and among those taken hostage.

We do not have the accurate details as of yet. We do know we have family members here in the United States as well who are in contact with regards to their family members who are missing, who they have not managed to make contact with.

COOPER: In terms of the scale of this, the scope of this attack, the sudden nature of it, I mean, have -- is this 1973 war the closest comparison?

SULTAN-DADON: We are certainly in a situation which is unimaginable, the likes of which we have not seen.

The brutal, barbaric massacre of civilians in their homes, on the streets, the magnitude of that is really incomprehensible, something that we have not seen, and while we are all -- all Israelis are heartbroken about what has happened to our brothers and sisters and the ongoing situation, we are determined to face these terrorists, to face their terror threat. They seek to destroy us, but we are here to stay.

COOPER: Anat Sultan-Dadon, I appreciate talking to you tonight. Thank you very much. I'm sorry it's under these circumstances.

I want to get Richard Roth who's been covering the latest at the United Nations.

Richard, what do you -- what's happening there?

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SENIOR UNITED NATIONS CORRESPONDENT: The Security Council will hold an emergency session in about an hour at the Security Council. There's likely to be no agreed-upon statement. You need all 15 countries.

And as we know from the past, the U.S. will side with Israel. And Russia and China, well, I would think they might want to vote against any proposed statement. You need 15 for a statement.

A short time ago, the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., with very strong language and using video and graphics, called this a barbaric pogrom carried out by the deadly savages of Hamas. He showed a picture of a grandmother from Israel who he says was taken by Hamas and brought back into Gaza, a grandmother who survived the Nazi Holocaust.

The other pictures and other pages that were shown were also dramatic as he tried to show why the Security Council should act in favor of Israel. But it doesn't seem like it's going to happen today. They would have to agree on a most simplest statement, like, we don't agree with violence, but I'm not sure that would happen -- Anderson.

COOPER: I mean, Richard, hostage-taking, this kind of hostage-taking, you know, stealing of civilians is completely against any international norm obviously.

ROTH: That's right. He said that these were unequivocal war crimes. The hostage issue has not come up in recent city council crises with the Middle East. This is a new game. As you mentioned talking with Nick, this thing could go on for a very long time.

COOPER: There is a small U.N. presence on the border with Lebanon. They're basically essentially monitors, right?

ROTH: That's right. The UNIFIL Force, and they're usually run over or bypassed by Hezbollah firing rockets. There have been rockets found in schools in the occupied territories, run by a U.N. agency known as UNRA. If Israel and Hezbollah have to duke it out on the northern side, certainly it harms any possible entry on the ground into Gaza.

Once again, this Israeli ambassador called it Israel's 9/11. He would love to have help from the Security Council but he said he doesn't really expect it.

[13:55:06]

COOPER: Yeah. Richard Roth reporting on the U.N., what is going on at the U.N. right now. Thank you, Richard.

We're going to take a short break. Our coverage from the region continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

WHITFIELD: Hello again, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Fredricka Whitfield in Atlanta.

Anderson Cooper in Tel Aviv.

Anderson, we'll get to you in a moment.

We begin with this breaking news. We're seeing pictures from a short time ago in Gaza where explosions are lighting up the night sky. It is 9:00 p.m. now in Israel and sporadic fighting has continued throughout the day following yesterday's shocking attacks by Hamas by way of air, land and sea.

Officials now saying at least 600 Israelis were killed in yesterday's attacks, more than 2,000 people wounded.

And disturbing video showing body bags stacked at the site of a music festival where Hamas fighters attacked.