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Hamas Launches Barrage of Rockets on Israel, IDF Says It Has Retaken Control of All Communities Near Gaza; Israel Defense Minister Orders Total Blockade on Gaza Strip; Now, Sirens in Northern Israel in Third Day of Violence. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 09, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Israel is at war with Hamas after the worst attack on this country since the 1973 war.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Ordinary Israelis and citizens from all over the world with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the scale and the scope and the barbarity and the immediacy of it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got used to the rockets. This was completely different attack that nobody was prepared for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We went to celebrate life and the most horrible attack that ever happened in our history.

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Obviously, there's no denying that there's a history of Iran aiding Hamas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to unfold and get worse but we'll overcome it.

NAFTALI BENNETT, FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Israelis are united. We all stand together.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We don't want to miss him anymore. We need Ben him back. I need him back. He's a hero.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to establish control back and do that as fast as possible in this unprecedented scenario.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're also going to have to be incredibly aware of hostages. They're essentially using them as human shields.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very real concerns as the tempo really continues to ratchet up.

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: And we start with breaking news this morning. Hamas launching a barrage of rockets on Israel after the Israeli military announced it had regain control of all towns near Gaza.

That is brand new video of the fiery aftermath in the city of Ashkelon far from the Gaza border. And it all comes more than 48 hours after Hamas militants launched an unprecedented surprise attack by land, sea and air, overrunning weakly defended military posts and going door to door in Israeli towns, killing civilians and taking hostages.

This morning, Israel's defense minister has announced a, quote, complete siege of the Gaza strip, no electricity, no food, no fuel.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: These are live pictures this morning out of Gaza, where Israeli airstrikes pummeled hundreds of targets overnight. The death toll has risen on both sides. More than 700 people confirmed dead in Israel and nearly 500 Palestinians killed.

Video also shows the horror at a music festival where 260 people were found dead. And this is drone video of burned out cars at the site.

We have team coverage on all of this. Let's start with our Nic Robertson live on the ground in Israel. Nic, you witnessed the strikes in Ashdod today. Strikes are happening in Gaza, as we speak. What can you tell us?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. I'm quite literally listening to fighter jets in the sky above me now. The air base that these fighter jets take off from is not too far from where we are and Gaza is in this direction over here. That's where they go to. That's where they've been going to.

And we have seen after almost every rocket attack coming out of Gaza, these fighter jets are in the air. They're on station. They're trying to target the attackers before they launch those rockets, trying to attack the launch sites afterwards as well and degrade that Hamas infrastructure inside of Gaza.

We witnessed today in Ashdod, which is on the Mediterranean Sea, coastline, about halfway between Gaza and Tel Aviv, to the north, we witnessed incoming Hamas rocket. We saw the Iron Dome defensive missile system try to intercept them. And we saw some of those rocket strikes get through in Ashdod.

Also, about 20 miles to the south of there in Ashkelon, it was also targeted in the same barrage. Some of the rockets got through there. We understand there were casualties in Ashdod as well.

It seems that although the scale of those barrages of Hamas rockets has reduced in number, some of them are still able to penetrate this defensive missile shield that is protecting the civilian population here. That is the reason most people can try to go about their daily lives as normal at the moment. This is a very fluid, very ongoing, very active situation. We're trying to get closer to Gaza today to see the areas where the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces, regained control and forced out all Hamas militants from that area.

MATTINGLY: Nic to that point, the IDF saying they regained control of the border towns. Is there an expectation that will hold or does that remain fluid as well?

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ROBERTSON: I think the expectation is that will remain pretty much in hold. What we've witnessed on the road today, we have seen heavy armor on the road today, tanks, armored personnel carriers, more troops moving south towards Gaza. We saw that through the night last night. It is very clear that that the means, mechanics of repairing the fence line and reinforcing the fence line with troops and heavy armor, that's in place.

Once the fence is secure, and it does appear to be secure, then that stops Hamas coming through, ideally. This time, clearly, having those intelligence failures previously, now Israel will be -- they will have more eyes on that fence, more eyes on that area, that zone between Gaza and the fence that Hamas breached to come across into Israel.

So, once that is secure, which seems to be, it should prevent more incursions. But, again, not to overemphasis, there were intelligence deficits. So, are there tunnels? Are there other ways for Hamas to get across? If it is, it appears it would only be in very small numbers. But, the level of security now is getting in place to mitigate against even that happening.

HARLOW: Nic Robertson, thank you for the reporting. Stand by. Let me bring in our Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour with more.

The development, Christiane, in the last hour or so is that Israel's defense minister has ordered a complete siege of Gaza. And in his words that means no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything closed. The question is, is that the beginning of what may become a ground incursion into Gaza?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, you can imagine that the pressure is massively high. This has been massacre that's been called executions, unprovoked, the biggest number of Israelis, civilians killed since the founding of the state in one day. So, it's huge. It even outpaces what happened 50 days ago of the Yom Kippur War. That means there's a huge amount of pressure, not just from people but also to defend the state, which is under unprecedented attack and clearly managed to evade and dupe Israel, Hamas did, in what they did.

So, what is their next potential steps? And, here, I would like to read a little bit of what one of the premier military analysts in Israel, Amos Harel, who has been on this network from (INAUDIBLE). He said, urgent negotiations are probably under way now, he says, to try to have a prisoner exchange agreement, under which, as we know from the past, Hamas will demand extortionate conditions.

Remember Gilad Shalit -- I'm sorry, I'm getting his name wrong, but the soldier who was taken and held for five years was released only in response of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Then potentially a crushing aerial campaign happening now against Hamas target, which will kill also, he says, thousands of civilians, the tightening of the blockade of this trip and damaging the infrastructure. And that, of course, could increase humanitarian disasters and, as has happened in the past, get the international community involved in trying to figure out how to stop this.

But this time, it seems very, very different in that this is really breached a huge redline, unlike any other confrontation of Israel and Hamas, the four previous confrontations. And it seems that Israel is saying right now it wants to decapitate Hamas and the leadership.

And then the other question, which many Israelis are talking about right now, is what about the government. And they're criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu's cabinet, who he was essentially strong-armed into appointing people in the security establishment who have no experience, the far right religious fundamentalists who made up the government of Israel. So, there is going to be a lot of pressure there as well. Poppy, Phil?

MATTINGLY: All right. Nic Robertson, Christiane Amanpour, don't go far. We'll certainly be coming back to you throughout the hour.

HARLOW: And joining us now is the international spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, or the IDF, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht. Lieutenant Colonel, thank you for being with us.

A few things I would like to understand from you this morning. First of all, do you have an update on the death toll?

LT. COL. RICHARD HECHT, INTERNATIONAL SPOKESPERSON, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES: So again, the numbers are thousands, very high numbers, hasn't changed much. What we came out with earlier is same more or less number, dozens of kidnapped civilians and hostages, civilians and soldiers in the Gaza strip. And we are slowly finishing to secure the communities within the envelope of the Gaza strip. I think we're at the end of it.

There still might be terrorists inside Israel. But actually, right before we came on, there was sirens going off in the north, in the Galilee.

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There were rocket attacks, or, as we speak, ongoing.

HARLOW: Do you have an update on the number of Israeli and American hostages taken?

HECHT: I cannot give you the exact number. We're still learning the numbers. I know there is also other foreign civilians that got kidnapped, a German, a Canadian and also some Americans, yes. HARLOW: Just in the last hour, we have learned that the Israeli minister of defense has ordered a complete siege of Gaza, in his words, no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything closed. Can you speak to us about what that means in practical terms? What is happening right now, for instance, has water been cut off?

HECHT: So, again, I'm sorry that I have to go back a bit because everybody is running right now to what's happening in Gaza. Right now, we are still coming from an unparalleled attack that happened into our communities. So, before we run to what's happening in Gaza and closure, et cetera, et cetera, please, I want you to capture what happened within the Israeli society.

This is an epic event. This is not like the conflicts that we had before. Yes, we are severely now attacking and striking within the Gaza strip. Yes, Hamas has been in control in the Gaza strip for 15 years or more. We do not have to supply them electricity. They have their own electricity. They have their generators.

We are not going after Hamas targets. Cynically, they have entrenched themselves within civilians. We are now messaging certain areas in Gaza to evict from certain locations where we know there's Hamas infrastructure, targets (INAUDIBLE). That's ongoing. But we're fighting. We're still fighting.

HARLOW: Yes. So, let's talk about that fighting. You said yesterday that the IDF's goal in the next 12 hours, and that was yesterday, would be to, quote, end the Gaza enclave and kill all the terrorists in our territory. Have you achieved that? And we just heard our colleague, Nic Robertson, talking about the border towns. Do you believe your hold on those border towns is now secure?

HECHT: It's more or less secure. There're no big firefights going on right now. There still could be -- we still haven't cleared Sderot, for example, where Nic has been spending a lot of time, quite a large time.

So, there could be still terrorists inside Israel. They came in in hundreds. So, there still could be terrorists. We're slowly scanning each of the communities and also we're evacuating the Israeli population from these locations. Sderot, for example, which is a big town, will not be evacuated.

HARLOW: Do you believe a ground offensive into Gaza is imminent at this point?

HECHT: So, all options are on the table. This is -- these are issues that are being discussed between the IDF leadership and our government. And it will be decided. This is not something that we have decided yet. All options are on the table.

HARLOW: Can you speak to how the hostages being held by Hamas inside of Gaza complicates those efforts and how you plan -- if there is a ground incursion to also rescue them and protect them because the likelihood they would be used as human shields is very high? HECHT: So, this is a big question. And this is something that we'll have to figure out how to be disruptive in our action. I will say, and this has been said by our leadership to the Hamas, these are not soldiers that they've taken. They've taken grandmothers, children, young girls, I've seen gruesome and barbaric things on their social medias of driving them in the streets and showcasing these young girls. If they touch a hair on their head, we will get to every one of them. This is something we have experienced before, an unprecedented attack.

HARLOW: After the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was taken in 2006, the Netanyahu government ended up after five years handing over more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for him. What cost is Israel willing to bear to bring all of these hostages back?

HECHT: Right now, as I'm wearing uniform, that would be a diplomatic discussion that would be happening in other channels. Right now, we're focusing on severe military action against the Hamas that started this.

Again, I know that everybody is now running to the water and the field (ph).

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Hamas started this. And now we are performing severe military action to degrade their capabilities.

HARLOW: So, Colonel, finally, on the objective that you have now, can you lay out the IDF objective for the next 24 hours?

HECHT: So, right now, our main objective is to, first of all, finish the safety, evacuate the communities and around the Gaza strip, secure our border. And start conducting strikes on Hamas targets.

Last night, just to put it into context, (INAUDIBLE), they were launching areas of all these hundreds of warriors that came through into Israel. It's not people that were coming into work or for medical activity, warriors coming into carnage, kill, kidnap civilians.

HARLOW: One more question before you go, I know you have so much on your plate, do you have any information about the health of those being held hostage?

HECHT: Sadly, we do not.

HARLOW: Thank you very much for all of your time and all of the information this morning, Lieutenant Colonel Hecht. We appreciate it very much.

HECHT: Thank you very having me.

HARLOW: Of course.

MATTINGLY: Well, the world is watching as the war unfolds in Israel and Gaza, this new video showing rockets fired from Gaza City into Israel.

HARLOW: Also new, very disturbing images surfacing from the attack on that music festival, where 260 bodies were recovered.

More of our breaking coverage ahead.

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HARLOW: Sirens ringing right now in Northern Israel. Hamas and Israel have been exchanging rocket fire. This has been happening throughout the morning. Hamas saying they have launched rockets beyond the area just surrounding Gaza, also toward Jerusalem and at Tel Aviv.

Becky Anderson joins us now again live. Becky, what can you tell us? You're live in Tel Aviv.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Yes. We have been on the sharp end of those Hamas rockets this morning, to the extent that we can hear a continuous sort of low level boom likely, the iron dome intercepting those missiles. Hamas confirming that they fired a series of rockets at Ben Gurion this morning. None of those landed, you know, in an impactful way.

But we are hearing this continuous boom. We've had sirens going off here in Tel Aviv where I am. We're about 28 minutes from the airport here. Our engineer, who is coming in through the airport this morning, had to hit the deck and videoed what you are seeing here, plumes of smoke very close, it seems, to the airport.

So, this is the intensity of this conflict is significantly ratcheting up, beyond no illusion. The IDF telling me yesterday and speaking to Yair Lapid, the opposition leaders again, this is early days, to a certain extent, only the beginning. And we should expect the intensity of this conflict to significantly ratchet up.

As far as the U.S. ambassador to Israel is concerned, and I can quote him here as well as other sources here, Hamas has fired something like 4,400 rockets. That's more than the total number of rockets that were fired in the last conflict. And that is in, what -- we're only into day three, into sort of 50 hours into this at present.

It's clearly uncharted territory. We have been talking about that for some time now. But I think now it's quite clear, and you have just spoken to the IDF spokesman there, who is not really mincing his words at this point. I know they can't give his numbers on the hostages held inside Gaza at this point, but it's clear there are huge concerns about what is going on there.

They're telling us they have now secured the communities around the Gaza border but admit that there is militant activity still on the Israeli side of that border. But from this perspective here now in Tel Aviv and reports of the sirens going off as a result of the barrage of rockets from Hamas today on Jerusalem, this is ratcheting up and the next hours and days are going to be absolutely crucial. MATTINGLY: No question about it. Becky Anderson, please keep us posted, great reporting. Thank you.

Well, there are disturbing and graphic new videos from the unprecedented attacks over the weekend. They show at least four hostages of Hamas militants, they are roaming in an area nearly three miles from the border with Gaza, next to burned out cars and a bulldozer. At the end of the video also shows four bodies in those same clothes, lifeless, on the ground.

I want to bring Editor and Foreign Affairs Columnist for Bloomberg Bobby Ghosh, former Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson is back with us, so is Christiane Amanpour.

Bobby, start with you, trying to draw parallels to past events similar kind of escalations, it's difficult because I don't know that we have ever seen anything to this scale certainly in recent memory, perhaps ever.

BOBBY GHOSH, EDITOR AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, BLOOMBERG: Yes. This is its own thing. I think we have to wrap our heads around this. This is terrorism on a scale that we have never seen. It's a combination -- there are some parts to it, if you focus only some aspects, it may give the appearance of military operation. But this is terrorism when you drag civilians into the street and shoot them, which apparently has happened to these people, that's just terrorism, pure and simple. We have gone from that phase.

Now, Israel's response will look much more like war, certainly like war, as we have seen it take place in that part of the world. And that will add to the general sense of confusion. There will be a tendency and there will be certainly from the Hamas side, they will try to portray this as this is an act of war. We're in war with Israel. We have always been at war in Israel. So, what we're doing is fair, but it's not. It's just not.

They've specifically targeted civilians. They targeted young people who were doing nothing more dangerous than participating in a music festival.

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This is purely terrorism. It's just a new -- the next iteration. 9/11 was one iteration. The attacks in Bataclan, in Paris, were another iteration. This is a new iteration. Evert new iteration is going to have elements of what went before and then new, horrific sort of additional aspects that we're just going to have to wrap our heads around.

HARLOW: And as all terrorism, striking civilian, children, the elderly, we heard from the Israeli ambassador, Holocaust survivors as well.

Christiane, the question is does this remain a war between Israel and Hamas or does this get much larger? What role does Hezbollah play coming from South Lebanon? This is what Secretary Blinken said on that front that they're watching very closely just yesterday. Here it is.

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ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: We saw some limited firing of missiles coming from Lebanon toward Israel. That seems for now to have stopped. The Israelis responded immediately. And as of now, that's quiet but it's something we're watching very carefully.

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HARLOW: Does this become larger, Christiane?

AMANPOUR Well, clearly, this is the whole question. Obviously, once -- there're two aspects, right? There's the hostages inside Gaza. There's the need, according to Israel, to potentially decapitate Hamas once and for all. And then there's the wider Middle East region.

So, Hezbollah did send some. Israel sent some back. It appears that that was so far status report, essentially Hezbollah saying we're here, we support Hamas, but it hasn't got bigger than that. The west is looking at what might erupt on the West Bank, what might happen in allied nations, like Jordan, a very rested Palestinian population in Jordan, which has one of the only -- well, one of the first two peace agreements with Israel along with Egypt. So, these are all very, very, very sensitive issues that historically do manifest themselves when this kind of confrontation has happened in the past.

Now, the additional is very, very intense looking at Iran's role in this. You saw, and we've played the Iranian president praising the Hamas action. And you know that the Iranian -- other officials in the U.N. have said we had nothing to do with it. But, certainly, the west is looking to see if there is any evidence of that. And then that brings in a whole another set of very, very dangerous potential escalatory moves.

And at the same time, any hope that the U.S. had that making deals between Israel and other members of the Arab world in addition to the Abraham Accords, any hope that the U.S. had that this could take care of a situation, which is ongoing the Middle East, has been crushed today. And that is most definitely on hold. And, again, the U.S. is involved because it's sending its carrier group and it historically had the most influence between certainly the Palestinian authority, not with Hamas, but the Palestinian authority and Israel.

MATTINGLY: Mr. Secretary, to that point, we have seen the actions that the U.S. has taken up to this point, both the words but also in sending the carrier group. Take us inside in your former position, the secretary of Homeland Security, what are you doing over the course of the last 72 hours?

JEH JOHNSON, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: If I were at the department of homeland security, I would be doing what I'm sure they're doing right now, which is to widen the intelligence law enforcement aperture, getting out to state and local law enforcement everything that we see, the potential for violence here in the homeland. There was just a few blocks away yesterday in Times Square confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis that got pretty intense.

If I were secretary of DHS, I would be putting out the word to state and local law enforcement that mosque, synagogues need to be on heightened alert, heightened security, heightened awareness and that state and local law enforcement itself right now needs to be vigilant.

We should not assume that though this is a hemisphere away, things are as normal here in this country. Passions are high. Anger is high. And so this is a time of heightened alert here in this country as well.

HARLOW: Bobby, when we just heard from the IDF spokesman there, Colonel Hecht, he said all options are on the table, when I asked him if a ground incursion is imminent. If that happens -- he certainly deny it. If that happens, what does that actually mean? Does that mean a reoccupation of Gaza? Phil brought up a great point last hour, they can get in. How do they get out? What would that look like?

GHOSH: Well, I can't imagine at this point that the Israelis want to reoccupy Gaza. That's taking on an enormous burden, security burden.

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They will want to do as much as they can to degrade Hamas' capability. Hamas has shown a much greater credibility.