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Islamic Jihad Secretary General Says Hamas Holding 30 Captives In Gaza; Israeli Security Cabinet Declares State Of War; US Carrier Strike Group Heads To Eastern Mediterranean Sea With Israel At War. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired October 08, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:22]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Fredricka Whitfield in Atlanta, alongside Anderson Cooper in Tel Aviv.

We will get you Anderson in a moment.

And let's begin with this latest information fighting in Israel and Gaza continues following yesterday's terror attack carried out by Hamas. We're seeing pictures from earlier in the day in Gaza where explosions lit up the darkness there. We're also learning that Hamas is holding as many as 30 people captive in Gaza. That's according to the Islamic Jihad Secretary General and residents in more than 20 Israeli communities near Gaza are being told to evacuate as hotspots of fighting continue to flare up. A video showing Israeli Border Police rescuing civilians after an exchange of gunfire with Hamas fighters on Saturday.

And then officials say at least 600 Israelis were killed in yesterday's terror attacks, more than 2,000 people wounded. And this disturbing video showing dozens of body bags stacked at the site of a musical festival where Hamas fighters attacked concertgoers.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the US is trying to confirm reports that Americans are among those killed.

Israel is striking back at targets in Gaza, and there you can see a mosque that was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. More than 300 Palestinians have been killed and 1,900 wounded in the fighting.

CNN's Anderson Cooper with me now from Tel Aviv -- Anderson.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Fredricka, thanks so much.

Fast-moving situation still on the ground, 39 or so hours since this surprise attack, this brutal attack began.

Clarissa Ward is along the Gaza border very close to Ashkelon, CNN's Nic Robertson is in Sderot in Israel, two places which are used to incoming rockets, but have never seen anything like this, the ground incursions that both those communities have experienced.

Clarissa, I want to start off with you. We have seen just sickening videos of women, young men, elderly people being taken, kidnapped -- taken, dragged across the border brutally into Gaza where they will be held hostage and used to suit the purposes of Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Talk a little bit about -- there was a music festival that we've heard about that was going on. A lot of people had gathered, a lot of young people, and that is where we've seen some of the hostages were taken from. Talk about what you've learned about what happened there.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So Anderson, we actually went to the site of this music festival today, and I think we're only just starting now to get a sense of just how many people were killed and just how bloody and horrific this entire scenario was.

The Israeli government took an unprecedented step and put up a photograph on Twitter that shows dozens and dozens of body bags inside a tent. These are all bodies that were taken from the scene of the festival, festivalgoers who are now being identified so that their loved ones can be allowed to know what has happened to them.

We went to the scene today. It is still very, very tense, a huge amount of Israeli military in the area. And you see as you approach it, just scores of vehicles abandoned on the road side, shot up completely.

We saw the bodies and I should -- sorry, I should have warned the audience that these are some graphic images that you are seeing now of Hamas fighters, because while the Israelis took the bodies of the innocent away, the Hamas fighters are still lying there. And you can see there are quite a few of them.

You can imagine the chaos, the fear, the terror, this group of some 500 young revelers had gathered to celebrate the end of the High Holidays, to dance the night away, about six in the morning, a barrage of rockets begins, followed by the infiltration of scores of Hamas militants who went through murdering and grabbing and kidnapping and taking hostages.

At one point, we could see actually where an Israeli Police vehicle have literally T-boned a truck holding Hamas militants to try to stop them from carrying out this horrendous mission and there are still so many people, Anderson who we've been in touch with, some of them, the families of some of them who are still looking for their loved ones.

[15:05:15]

Some of whom went down, when they heard what was happening early in the morning, one father went down the scene to try to find his daughter, he is now missing.

And for these families, the excruciating pain of them not knowing where your child or where your loved one is, whether they're alive, whether they're being held in Gaza, whether they are possibly dead, but this was -- this festival took place over quite a large area, and people were running in so many different directions, that it's difficult to get a grip on exactly how extensive the casualties were.

And as I mentioned before, as we pushed further in, the Israeli military saw us, they turned us right around, and they were in very alert posture with their weapons and they said you simply cannot be here -- Anderson.

COOPER: And Nic Robertson, you've been traveling along the Gaza border now for hours, you talked to a spokesperson for the IDF. There are still points along the border -- that's just a helicopter passing over -- there are still points that are in contention, is that right? I mean, there are still points where Hamas fighters are trying to come across?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Absolutely correct.

There were seven earlier on in the afternoon. The IDF is quite prompt in announcing when they've taken back control of an area. We were in Sderot earlier on today. They announced pretty quickly when they're taken back control of the police station there last night, in the early hours of this morning after a heavy firefight.

So, yes, those areas that were in contention a couple of hours ago, still appear in contention with similar experience to what Clarissa is experiencing.

When you come across groups of soldiers, they will be on high alert. Checkpoints were found. Soldiers who have the safety on their weapons, because that's the posture they need to be in because they are concerned that the next person that comes up to them could be from Hamas, because those infiltrations are still existing.

We haven't heard about any new infiltrations this evening, but we were yesterday evening, we were early this morning. We heard about one this afternoon, as well. We heard a burst of gunfire close to us. That again was a suspected infiltration and that's what the Israeli forces are up against around here.

And I think what we're witnessing this field medical post that earlier on when we were talking just a couple of hours ago, Anderson, there were ambulances swarming around here, it's really buzzing with medics and doctors. Now, a lot of those ambulances have taken off. They've dispersed around the area, because they're moving into places where the Army feels that they will be better ready to be used.

And I think the understanding that we would have is that they will be close to those areas of contention, because they're not just helping civilians here, they are helping injured soldiers as well.

It is all about trying to take back control, and making sure that any wounded, any casualties can get speedy help -- Anderson.

COOPER: And Clarissa Ward, is it clear to you that the mobilization of Reserve Forces, is that still underway? Is it clear to you -- I mean, do they have all their troops where they want them at this stage? Or is it still large movements of troops and trying to get people rallied and armed and moving forward?

WARD: We are still seeing huge amounts of movements and people clearly kind of arriving on the scene, some of them carrying their duffel bags with them. Large amounts of military hardware being moved around as well.

When we were down near the area with that music festival, we saw a huge column of tanks being brought into the area.

We also, as Nic had described, had to turn around at one stage because there was an active firefight going on with the Israeli military and what we would presume, were Hamas militants.

As Nic said, they continue to lurk or hide in plain sight in these areas. And so for now, the focus is very much to try to root out any militants who may have infiltrated, but also to build up a huge presence along that border and to try to repair the damage to the border.

One of the things that I hadn't necessarily expected to see was huge flatbed trucks carrying building materials to try to repair the damage at some of these places where the border was transgressed, and I'm just warning you now, Anderson, because I have just lost communications on my phone here, so I will not be able to hear you for a minute.

Please bear with me while I get back.

COOPER: Okay, we'll come back. Obviously, we'll come back to Clarissa.

Nic, in terms of where you're at, for people in Sderot, is Sderot secure?

[15:10:30]

ROBERTSON: Ostensibly, yes. The lot of the civilians have left. People we saw there that were still in their houses were very much staying in their houses. The power is off in a lot of parts of the town, so it's dark.

So a lot of people there will have that uneasy feeling about the explosions, and some of the explosions we were hearing and the gunfire was very close. And that seemed to indicate that -- and certainly the troops on patrol, weapons ready, looking for a suspected Hamas militant on the streets there late this afternoon, indicate that there is that potential.

It's so difficult, in a way it's proving a negative, how do you know when you have them all rounded up? It's very hard to know. One can pop up and start shooting, just because the area has been quiet for a few hours, doesn't mean it's fully secure.

It's when the fence is re-secured. It's when you've got the troops in place, and perhaps, it is going to take realistically, several days for know for sure that all the militants have been rounded up. It is just -- it's a very big logistical task, and at night here, you

can hide out pretty easily and that's despite the high-tech equipment the Israeli Forces have, but re-establishing the border is obviously critical.

If you don't have it sealed, and you don't have eyes on it, again, re- establish that level of control, you're still open -- you're still open to infiltration -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes. I mean, it's one of the difficulties for Israeli Forces is just prioritizing all the things that need to be done. I mean, sealing the multiple border places that were overrun, searching for any militant fighters who still may be hiding on the ground or are still actually engaged in fights, dealing with the -- just trying to figure out how many hostages have been taken, who they are, getting contacts with their loved ones, trying to figure out, identifying the dead, you know, responding to stop more rockets from being fired from Gaza to all points across Israel, including here in Tel Aviv, and it has been very quiet here in Tel Aviv, thankfully, over the last several hours, and trying to knock out and track down leadership of Hamas and others.

I mean, the number of multiple fronts Israeli officials and Israeli Forces have to contend with is -- it is overwhelming here in the first two days of this.

ROBERTSON: I think, absolutely, and again, in that environment, you don't tell the enemy what you're going to do. You do want to inform the Israeli population about how you're going to secure them, but you're not going to announce publicly we're moving X number of forces and X equipment down to Gaza, because you also may need to put some of that, keep it in reserve close to Jerusalem, close to areas in the West Bank where violence could be triggered there.

So that will be an Israeli military concern as well as the north, the border with Lebanon. We saw a sort of a testing of that, if you will, overnight. It's not clear what the other players in this multiple threat matrix, bet it Syria, as you were discussing with Clarissa earlier, be it Hezbollah in Lebanon, be it other actors in the West Bank, and it is not just Hamas, Islamic Jihad. You know, ISIS is believed to have a foothold in some of those areas inside the West Bank.

So there are multiple actors presenting multiple threats, and if you announce you're going to secure the border with Gaza with a big swarm of force, you potentially leave yourself vulnerable, you potentially signal that you're going to be vulnerable. As you were saying, it's very complex.

COOPER: Yes, Nick Robertson, thank you. Clarissa Ward, we'll continue to check in with you over the next several hours. We're going to take a short break. Our breaking news coverage continues in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:18:54] COOPER: It is a very fast moving situation still on the ground here,

and we have been talking to our correspondents and to people all across Israel and elsewhere.

I want to bring in Rolene Marks. She head of a group called diplomacy -- or excuse me, head of diplomacy with a Women's International Zionist Organization. She is joining me now.

Rolene, I appreciate you being with us.

You've been talking to people whose loved ones have been kidnapped. People are reaching out to you, desperate for information. What are you hearing from them?

ROLENE MARKS, HEAD OF DIPLOMACY, WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL ZIONIST ORGANIZATION: Thank you, Anderson.

It's just sheer desperation and utter devastation. We don't know if their loved ones are in Gaza, if they are dead, and they're appealing to me maybe through media channels, maybe through whatever connections I have here with government channels, if we've heard anything, and it just such a feeling of helplessness to not be able to give them an answer.

[15:20:08]

And I can barely articulate the desperation coming from parents who just want to know that their children are still alive, and that there is a chance for them. You know, I don't want anybody to have to deal with the phone calls from desperate parents, and just hear the utter despair in their voices and desperation as they wait for word of their loved ones.

And this situation is very, very personal from our organization as well.

COOPER: Rolene, at this point, again, this is 39 hours since these attacks began, there is still a lot families don't know. They don't know if their loved one has died or have been killed, has been murdered, or if their loved one has been kidnapped.

Are they -- I mean, are there people in the government reaching out to them? Or is it still so early in this that there's just not a lot of information, and that's why they're reaching out to you. They're just desperate.

MARKS: I think the situation is very sensitive, given the nature of these depraved attacks that we've been very careful or the government has been very careful not to jeopardize any security for those who are being held captive.

But there has been an appeal for families who think their children might be amongst the dead, to please come to Central Israel with DNA samples.

You know, for us, this is very reminiscent of what we heard on 9/11, and the feeling is just absolute, distraught and devastation. For my organization, the Women's International Zionist Organization, this is so personal.

We have four daycare centers in this in the town of Sderot. We have a facility that helps with PTSD. We have been reaching out to our workers frantically to make sure that they're all okay, that they are all accounted for.

The Merhavia kibbutz of Afula is also a community we know so well. This is a community we helped evacuate in 2014. Just shortly after that, they gave us a tremendous thrust to say thank you.

We now know that at least 15 of those kibbutznik are dead, including families.

This is a kibbutz that has a project called the Wall of Peace where all they want is peace with their neighbors, where you can place a tile on the wall between Gaza and Israel.

This is -- there are no words, just absolute sorrow to explain what people are feeling what the situation on the ground is.

COOPER: Did you have -- I mean, you know the situation here obviously better than most? Did you ever expect, there can be an attack like this?

I mean, obviously rockets are a fact of life, sadly, in sickeningly, but an attack like this in Sderot, in Ashkelon and elsewhere.

MARKS: Rockets, we unfortunately are used to, which is why we have four completely rocket proof daycare centers in a tiny town. In no other country has a situation where you have to send your children to kindergarten in a completely rocket proof daycare center, but this is the unimaginable. This is a level of depravity that you only see in a horror movie.

I don't think in our worst nightmare, we could anticipate a situation where thousands of terrorists infiltrate our borders, our communities, and execute people and kidnap people and take them to probably an untold situation, an unfathomable situation in Gaza.

COOPER: And, you know, we were talking to our correspondent, Clarissa Ward, who went to the site of the dance party that was taking place near the border. And again, those stories are just starting to come out about the slaughter that took place there. Again, more will be learned in the coming hours.

But it is hard to imagine the pain that the families are going through right now as they wait and they wonder where their loved one is.

MARKS: We cannot understand it. We cannot understand it. If you're a family member just a short while ago, the family members gave a press conference and I don't think that there's anybody in this country who watched that hasn't had their heart reached out at the sheer terror coming from the parents and absolute heartbreak in their voices.

[15:25:22]

These are people that went to a rave, a party in the desert, to celebrate peace, to call for peace, to think of a day where we will manifest peace between us and our neighbors. Our war is not with the people of Gaza. We know that they are held hostage just as much we are by terror entities.

And this is why young Israelis are having events on the border to call for peace, this is what they want, and this is the situation a short while ago, ZAKA, the organization responsible for handling the remains of the dead after terror attacks and disaster have confirmed 250 bodies have been recovered there.

It is the absolute unfathomable for anybody, for any family member, and sitting captive in Gaza now are the elderly, our elderly grannies, our small children who must be terrified out of their minds, are pregnant women, are men and women who woke up yesterday with nothing planned for the day except to celebrate, support Simchat Torah, maybe just spent the day with their family, and now we are living a nightmare.

COOPER: Yes. So many -- Rolene Marks, I appreciate your time tonight. Thank you very much.

Much more ahead. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:31:08]

COOPER: CNN is learning, a USS Carrier Strike Group is headed to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea as Israel prepares for a large scale campaign to respond to the terror attacks we have been seeing here over the last 39 or so hours.

I want to go to CNN's Oren Liebermann.

Oren, what are you hearing?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: This is the USS carrier -- this is the USS Gerald R. Ford, a Carrier Strike Group that was operating in the Western Mediterranean Sea over the course of the past several days. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced it will now be heading to the Eastern Med. So from European waters into the waters of the Middle East off the coast of Israel there.

Now let's be clear about what the goal of this Carrier Strike Group is there. It is not to take part in Israel's operation. It is instead to offer a message of support and deterrence. It was President Joe Biden, who said yesterday that other parties, referencing even if you're not naming Hezbollah in Lebanon and other militant groups in Syria, warning them not to get involved here, and that now is what the US is showing with this Carrier Strike Group that also consists of a guided missile cruiser and a number of guided missile destroyers.

The Commander of US Central Command, General Eric Kurilla underscored that in a statement about the deployment saying: US CENTCOM stands firmly with our Israeli and regional partners to address the risks of any party seeking to expand the conflict.

It's also worth pointing out that it's not just the Navy stepping in here. The Air Force is as well. There are several fighter squadrons, not in Israel, but in the Middle East, in countries like Qatar and other areas, those will be augmented, according to Austin. So there, you'll see squadrons of F-35s, F-15s, F-16s, A-10s essentially bolstered here.

Now it's important to note that some of those squadrons were sent to the region specifically as a response to increased Iranian aggression both in Syria and in the Gulf of Oman against commercial shipping there. And the purpose of these deployments was to deter that sort of behavior.

Now with what we're seeing from Hamas, a terrorist organization that gets part of its funding, part of its guidance from Iran, that message expanded with the augmentation, the bolstering of these fighter squadrons in the region -- Anderson.

COOPER: And Oren, Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said that the US is working overtime to try to verify reports of missing and dead Americans. Any idea? Any new information about that?

LIEBERMANN: We haven't gotten an official statement. We have seen the reports, the rumors circulating, and of course, we've talked to a family and friends who are trying to find their own loved ones and their own friends. But again, there has been no official statement.

It is worth pointing out that many of the American citizens in Israel are dual citizens, so they are American-Israeli.

Having been there six years, I honestly don't know the number off the top of my head, how many there are there, but it is a significant number. I would expect and this is partially just speculation, a number well over a hundred thousand American citizens who are dual American-Israeli citizens in the country who have moved there and take part and live in Israeli society.

It is worth noting that we have seen statements from for example, Mexico and Brazil saying they believe some of their citizens were taken hostage. And the only reason I point that out is this isn't simply an issue for America and Israel to deal with. There are other countries here trying to figure out where their own citizens are, and whether they were killed or taken hostage -- Anderson.

COOPER: Oren Liebermann, thanks very much. We'll check in with you throughout the coming hours.

Hadas Gold is in Jerusalem for us at this hour.

Hadas, I understand you're learning some more information about that dance party that was taking place near the border and the fatalities there.

HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Anderson.

So we're now getting official confirmation according to Israeli Medical Services that 260 bodies have now been discovered and recovered from the scene of that music festival. This was called the Nature Festival. This was essentially a rave in the wilderness, and videos we're seeing from just before the attack took place makes it look like, you know your typical music festival rave all night party with a bunch of young people dancing to DJs.

[15:35:11]

But then after these rockets started launching around six, six-thirty on Saturday morning, militants then directly attacked this music festival.

We have heard now and seen the videos, the harrowing videos of people trying to escape. This is also where several civilians were captured and taken hostage by Hamas, including that video that we've all seen so often of that young woman on the back of a motorcycle pleading, as she is being taken away by Hamas militants.

And we knew that there was going to be a high number of casualties at this event just by the sheer number of young people who attended, but also because what we heard from survivors who had escaped, some of them in really harrowing ways to get out of there, because many of them, Anderson, went to this sort of middle of nowhere place on shared buses, on shared cars, shared taxi. They didn't exactly keep their cars there. So many of them fled essentially on foot.

And we've heard from some people just talking about how they witnessed their own friends getting shot at. One even told Israeli media that he believed they were shot up by an RPG, not just you know, regular rifles. Others said that they essentially escaped into the wilderness, into the nature, and hid in the bushes for hours on end until they thought it was safe enough to leave.

But now, we are officially getting note that there are 260 bodies that were found at this music festival. Right now the death toll on the Israeli side is north of 600.

Anderson, this might be the biggest mass casualty event in Israeli history. I would have to go, you know, looking through the statistics, looking through the history, but I can't recall off the top of my head, another event where 260 people were killed in one place.

And also keep in mind, Anderson, this does not count potentially others who had gone to hospital with injuries. I do think we should expect that the death toll not only overall, but from this specific music festival, could rise in the coming hours and days.

COOPER: And Hadas, just to be clear, we're not talking about deaths from a rocket that was fired from a great distance. You're talking about slaughter, you're talking about human people who came and face- to-face, shot at, stabbed, killed these people.

GOLD: Yes, as far as we understand now, I don't have this confirmed that a rocket or mortar landed right there. But from what we've heard from survivors, from people who escaped, they didn't mention rockets that landed on them. All they mentioned was just militants who swarmed this event. And again, one of them talked about using things like RPG, so it appears it wasn't just potential rifle fire.

We've also heard from parents of some of these people who are attending the festival because as you'd expect, at a sort of all-night rave, a lot of them were young, a lot of them were in their 20s. And we heard from one father who just gave a press conference a few hours ago, saying that he was on the phone with two of his daughters who attended the festival together, they called him when the militants first started coming in. He told them to lay on the ground facedown to hold each other.

He said that he could hear men speaking Arabic around them. And he said he was on the phone with him for about 30 minutes before the last thing he heard was a few deep breaths.

He says he has no idea where his daughters are, whether they're among the killed, whether they are among the captives, because we know that quite a few captives were taken from this event.

Again, this is one of the darkest -- this alone, this alone -- this attack on a festival by itself, Anderson, would be one of the darkest days for Israel in its entire history. But now it has to be taken into account with what's happening across Israel right now, with all of these infiltrations, with these rocket attacks, and obviously this is still a quickly developing situation.

COOPER: A slaughter of 263 young people at a dance. Hadas Gold, thank you.

We'll go right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:42:56]

COOPER: Joining us now is Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan. He's also the former Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Ambassador, thank you for being with us.

We've just learned that -- it's now confirmed, some 263 young people were slaughtered at a dance near the border by Hamas killers. Have you ever seen anything like this?

GILAD ERDAN, ISRAEL'S AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Only during the Nazi era. I mean, they came into this festival, the barbaric terrorists of Hamas, and they just shot all of them as if they were insects. That's how they treated them.

And yes, such -- you know, being so barbaric, just the Nazis death squads used during the 1940s, that is how they treated the Jews and that's why we continue to say that this is our 9/11, and from now on, things will never be as they were.

We are committed, Anderson, to change the equation. We are going to shatter the old paradigm, and we are not going to stop until we will obliterate the terror capabilities of Hamas, because such atrocities won't happen again to our people, to our civilians.

COOPER: I mean, how do you go about that, given the complexities given the reality of Gaza and Gaza City and two million people living very close. How do you break the stranglehold of Hamas on that territory?

ERDAN: Look, the situation in Gaza is a tragedy. Obviously I cannot share here with the world, with our enemies all of our strategic military plans, but we all need to remember that 17 years ago we withdrew from the Gaza Strip.

[15:45:01]

Hamas took over and since then, you know every dollar that was spent in Gaza was never spent on building schools or hospitals or supporting the population that we would like to see them being supported. But instead, it was used to build, you know, another -- dig another terror tunnel or to build the terror capabilities of Hamas because we should learn and understand until now, Hamas is exactly like ISIS. It's exactly like al-Qaeda. It's a genocidal Islamist movement, terror organization, and you cannot convince them or change their ideology with economic incentives.

So right now, we all need to be united. The free world, all those who support liberal democratic values should stand with Israel and support not just today, but the weeks ahead of us, support whatever we will do there in order to obliterate Hamas terrorist infrastructure.

COOPER: We've just learned, I should point out, Mr. Ambassador that at least three Americans had been killed following the attacks in Israel close to the Gaza border, according to an internal US memo that we've just heard about. In terms of what happens now, how concerned are you about a widening of this? The northern border, we saw obviously in 2006, Hezbollah attacking Israel, do you expect them -- do you expect this situation on the northern border to change?

ERDAN: Look, we are aware of the long-term goal of Iran to arm its terrorist proxies that surrounds us like Hamas, like Hezbollah, that's their long-term goal, how to annihilate the one and only Jewish state because they would like to support them also a nuclear umbrella in the future. That's why they transfer weapons and funds to them.

But we are making it very clear, obviously, as I said, we are focused on the southern front, Hamas. We are aware and we hear what's happening on our northern front. That's why we also mobilized, you know, reservists to strengthen our northern border, and we are fully prepared.

We also conveyed clear messages to the Lebanese government, we would hold them responsible and accountable for everything that would happen coming from their territory, and we hope they will understand our messages because we don't want to expand it to another front. We just want to bring back the security to Israel and make sure that we obliterate Hamas' terrorist infrastructure.

COOPER: Ambassador Gilad Erdan, appreciate it. Thank you very much.

We'll be right back.

ERDAN: Thank you, Anderson, for having me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:50:51]

COOPER: It is obviously a very tense situation on the ground, particularly along the border with Gaza.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz right now is following the Gaza side of the story and what life has been like there for the last two days.

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Anderson.

And when it comes to the goals, the objectives inside the Gaza Strip for Israel, there is absolutely the short term and the long term here. First and foremost is going to be those hostages, those captives. We know just in the last hour that Islamic Jihad says it has 30 hostages, potentially Hamas has more.

But in the longer term, Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to essentially break the back of Hamas, make sure that they can never carry out anything like this again, but actually doing that, that's really complicated. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ABDELAZIZ (voice over): These are the first moments of what Prime Minister Netanyahu warned will be a long and difficult war.

Airstrikes in the densely populated Gaza strip that the Palestinian Health Ministry says left hundreds dead and thousands more wounded.

Israel's military says it is targeting headquarters belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and released this video.

Netanyahu vowing to avenge the hundreds of Israeli lives lost with more ferocious firepower to come.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAEL PRIME MINISTER (through translator): all the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating it that we can see, we will turn it into an island of ruins

I am telling Gaza's people to leave those places now, because we will take action everywhere.

ABDELAZIZ (voice over): But destroying or severely deterring Hamas will prove extremely challenging for Israel's Army.

A significant and unprecedented number of Israeli citizens were captured by the group according to the Israeli Military. This disturbing Social Media Video geolocated by CNN shows a victim, hands appear to be bound in captivity, and Hamas claims the hostages are distributed across the strip, Israel believes to be used as human shields.

Israel's military is pressing on. With air assaults already underway, the IDF said it is preparing for a potential ground invasion, and that all options are on the table.

Thousands of Israeli reservists have been called up for the task.

(UNIDENTIFIED MALE speaking in foreign language.)

ABDELAZIZ (voice over): Israel's Army is telling Gazans to clear the way for their operations, ordering families to leave their homes and providing locations for evacuation.

But with the conflict sure to engulf the whole of the strip, for most, there is no way out.

Gaza is largely isolated from the world by an Israeli air, land, and sea blockade and Egypt's southern border closure.

Electricity which is mostly provided by Israel was cut off and internet disrupted, unclear how long services will be severed.

And with Hamas leadership reportedly going underground, the two million people living in the 140 square mile territory have nowhere to turn.

Fear is growing that an unprecedented attack on Israel could yield unprecedented bloodshed in Gaza.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ABDELAZIZ (on camera): You can only imagine that with each one of those airstrikes, those air assaults being carried out by the Israeli military on Gaza right now, with each one of them, families of those hostages, Anderson, they could be holding their breath worried that they, their families, their loved ones could be caught in the crosshairs.

And then there's just the wider picture here: How do Israelis who live near that Gaza border area, in areas like Sderot and Ashkelon, areas that were attacked, how do they live in those areas again, and still feel the sense of security after this assault?

COOPER: I should point out, there's plenty of residents of Gaza who do not like Hamas, and yet Hamas has total control there. I mean, there -- it's not as if they have many options of overthrowing Hamas at this stage.

[15:55:06]

ABDELAZIZ: That's the point to remember here, Anderson. Absolutely. You have two million people living inside the Gaza Strip in densely populated, deeply impoverished, deeply underserved area. Hamas didn't take their opinion before carrying out any attacks. They

don't go to the ballot box anytime they throw a rocket at Israel, but they absolutely suffer the consequences of any decision by that militant group.

And what's important to know right now is that reports indicate that Hamas goes underground, right? It saves its own. It goes underground in Gaza.

The families, the civilians, the children, those who are going to suffer, they have nowhere to turn because you have that Israeli blockade, of course, Egypt on the other side. This is going to potentially be one of the bloodiest chapters in Gaza's history just as it has been in Israel's.

COOPER: Salma Abdelaziz, appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us today. I'm Anderson Cooper.

We'll have more later today from Tel Aviv.

Our special coverage continues right now with Abby Phillip.

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