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Relentless Day Over Skies in Middle East With Israel and Hezbollah Both Pounding Dozens of Targets

Aired July 28, 2006 - 13:59   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: A new push for a multinational force. Here's the latest on the Middle East crisis at this hour.
President Bush and Britain's Tony Blair say they agree on the need for a peacekeeping force in the Middle east. Mr. Bush says Secretary of State Rice will be back in the region tomorrow.

Three Hezbollah rockets that struck Afula, Israel, Friday were the most powerful rockets to hit Israel since the crisis began. Those Rockets carried 100 kilograms of explosives each. The Katyusha rockets fired until now carrying about 22 kilograms of explosives.

Now, military officials say the Israeli air force has bombed 110 Hezbollah targets since last night. Eighty-four Hezbollah rockets had landed in Israel by this afternoon.

A relentless day in the skies over the Middle East. For desperate evacuees, it's hard to avoid that crossfire. In Lebanon, a humanitarian convoy was hit by a mortar on its way to Tyre.

CNN's Ben Wedemen joins us live from Tyre.

Any more information on those injuries that happened in that convoy, Ben?

Ben, are you able to hear me?

All right, we're going to try to get connected would Ben. Once again, having a little technical problem there. We apologize

Here's a look at his piece. We'll try and get him right out of it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A red cross on a white bed sheet. Staff at Tyre's Nejam (ph) hospital hope Israeli jets will see their flag and spare them.

Just a few minute away by car, smoke rises from another airstrike. People head north by whatever means possible.

No one knows how many people are still hunkered down in their homes in southern Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands have already fled north.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The situation over there, it's very bad right now. Everything is running out right now. There is nothing there.

No food, no electric, no water, no medicine. Nothing. A lot of old people there, too.

WEDEMAN: Refugees gather at Tyre's rest house hotel, where local relief workers put them on buses to Beirut. They're exhausted, scared, desperate to move on.

Hanan Assi escaped the south with her family and $300 in her pocket. On a borrowed mobile phone she assures a relative everyone is safe.

HANAN ASSI, SOUTH LEBANON RESIDENT: There are still a lot of people there. There are still a lot of people who need help. (INAUDIBLE), and everybody -- it's just -- it's terrible. They need some help.

WEDEMAN: The danger of travel by road is everywhere to be seen, and fuel is in short supply because many of the gas stations have been bombed.

(on camera): People who make it this far to the northern edge of Tyre have a good chance of reaching safety, but relief officials are far more concerned about people stuck in remote villages in the far south who just can't get out.

(voice over): The United Nations, the Red Cross and other groups are doing what they can, but in the midst of war their hands are tied.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are people who have been wounded and who have not been evacuated until now. And one other big issue, there are people who have been killed. There are cars with dead bodies aboard. Nobody has been able to get there to get them out and to give theme a decent funeral.

WEDEMAN: So the living take their chances and go.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN: And, Kyra, of course Red Cross officials are concerned about a variety of things. One is that, for instance, the electricity isn't working in much of the southern part of the country, so water pumps don't work. People are drinking dirty water. They say they're afraid disease is going to become a serious problem in the coming days and weeks -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: So, question to you, because when we -- when we talk about these type of attack on these various facilities, Ben, say in Iraq, there are still emergency crews that try to get out and get all of that up and running again. Does that even exist right now in this battle, or is business not going forward at all due to the threats?

WEDEMAN: There's no business. Nobody is going around their -- about their business in any sense of a normal manner.

I mean, here in Tyre, for instance, there is still a local government. When things get hit they do try to repair the lines, the electricity lines, the water lines, but to the south, in those areas, nobody can go around. Occasionally there are convoys for the Red Cross, for the United Nations, for instance, but to repair the infrastructure at this point is simply not possible. That will have to come, hopefully, when peace returns -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Ben Wedemen, thanks so much.

Well, Haifa is a top target of Hezbollah rocket fire. The usually vibrant port city of northern Israel is now desolate, depressing and at times frightening.

My colleague Wolf Blitzer got a first-hand look from for "THE SITUATION ROOM."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Shortly after arriving in Haifa, we hear a wailing sound, a warning that Hezbollah Katyusha rockets are on the way.

(on camera): All right, we are at this Israeli air force base. The sirens have just gone off. You can hear them behind us. And, so, they are telling us we should go to a shelter, which is what we are going to do right now.

(voice-over): Israeli civil defense officials say the rockets could land as quickly as 20 seconds after the sirens sound. Sometimes, you have a little longer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But, if they don't hit in the first two minutes, then you will get an all-clear sign.

BLITZER (on camera): Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's how long it takes from here. On the other side, it's a close view.

BLITZER: Did they get the all-clear?

(voice-over): That does not give someone a lot of time to run. And that explains why so many residents in the northern part of Israel have moved south, to more secure areas.

(on camera): How often do these sirens go off?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have been going off every few hours.

BLITZER: Yes?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As you have seen, since this morning, we have had three of them. So...

BLITZER: All right, we just got the all-clear. That means the sirens are off. If Katyushas have landed, they have landed. We don't know if there was any damage or destruction. But we're going to get out of here now, and walk back to our van, and head over to our location in Haifa, where we are working.

(voice-over): The ride through this city is bleak, not many cars on the streets, not many people either.

(on camera): As I take a look at this port, and this Haifa Bay, it's pretty depressing to see there aren't very many ships at all docked in Haifa right now, pretty much empty, understandably, because those Katyusha rockets, they have been coming in, day 15, day 16.

And there's, according to Israeli military authorities, really no expected end in sight, at least over the short term.

If you take a look down there, you see that beautiful Bahai temple, the shrine here in Haifa, such a great attraction. People come from all over the world to see it. And you see these buildings that -- pretty much deserted.

You see the infrastructure. You see what was a robust city, and probably will come back to be a very robust city down the road. But, right now, it's not.

(voice-over): For the future of Haifa and the northern part of Israel, this will be a turning point. It's still not clear, though, in which direction things turn.

Wolf Blitzer, CNN, Haifa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: And you can join Wolf Blitzer live from the Middle East in "THE SITUATION ROOM" this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, and for the live primetime edition at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

Well, strike fighters, Katyusha rockets, tanks and bombs, battle assets and weapons we have heard a lot about in the 17 days of the Middle East crisis. Now add this to the list: Khaibar 1.

Steve Hartov, editor in chief of "Special Operations Report" and an Israeli Defense Forces airborne vet has been working his sources for us. He joins us live from New York with more on the weapons and strategy within this fight.

Steve, good to see you again. This Khaibar 1, we've been able to talk a little bit about it prior to this interview. You can probably give us more insight, but I think the big concern here is range. It went past Haifa, so a lot of people are sitting back and saying, "Hey, could this hit Jerusalem?"

STEVE HARTOV, ISRAELI MILITARY EXPERT: Well, Kyra, it is a concern. I mean, the Khaibar 1 is actually new nomenclature for what we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks, the Fajar 5 (ph). And it's named the Khaibar 1 because -- I think it was 669, there was a battle between Mohammed and the town of Khaibar, outside Medina, and Hezbollah tends to rename these rockets as if we're not going to understand that they're actually of Iranian or Syrian origin. But it does have a 35-mile range. It can have in upwards of a 50 kilogram warhead. And as you just said, it struck Afula, which is about 17 kilometers southeast of Haifa. So, there's a concern there that they're moving on to some higher ordnance, more powerful ordnance.

PHILLIPS: Well, which leads me to my next question, and I know I didn't run this by you, so forgive me if you don't have a lot of background on this because it just came through our Matthew Chance. He was saying the Israeli Defense Force is now concerned about the Zilzal (ph) coming from Iran, this would be the next step in technology. He's telling me a range of about 150 miles.

So, knowing what you know about Iran and Syria supplying weapons to Hezbollah, would this surprise you if we saw one of these -- one of these rockets?

HARTOV: You know, Kyra, it really is going to surprise me, although, as we always say, nothing really surprises us in the Middle East. But it will surprise me only because, tactically, and in terms of a global, political strategy, affording Hezbollah that capability is basically putting Iran -- an Iranian signature on that war, on this war. And I'm not so sure that the Syrians or the Iranians want to openly now involve themselves by supplying Hezbollah with such long- range capabilities.

If that is going to be the next step, then I think they're inviting a response from the Israelis.

PHILLIPS: Interesting.

OK. You and I talking about Bint Jbeil, and you said, Kyra, this is like Iraq's -- you know, the Falluja -- Bint Jbeil and Falluja, one in the same. And as we talk about that comparison, tell me why you think of it that way.

Number one, expectations?

HARTOV: Well, Kyra, there are so many similarities in terms of where insurgents determine that they're going to make a symbolic stand, or terrorists in this case, whatever nomenclature you'd like to use. Falluja was definitely Iraq's Stalingrad for the Iraqi insurgents, and the Marine Corps worked very hard to take it, as well as the U.S. Army.

The fighting between coalition forces and the insurgents in Falluja is very similar to what the Israelis are encountering in Bint Jbeil, and I would expect that those insurgents and terrorists have shared TTPs, tactics, techniques and procedures, on how to defeat a conventional army in close quarters battles such as that. But, the Israelis are regarding Bint Jbeil as an outpost that needs to be taken in order to move forward, both politically, strategically, militarily and symbolically.

It's not a village. It's got 20,000 inhabitants, those of whom are still there. And I think that the taking of Bint Jbeil is going to have the same significance to the Israelis that the taking of Falluja had to U.S. forces.

PHILLIPS: Well, are those house-to-house raids taking place in Bint Jbeil like what we saw in Falluja? Are forces going from home to home trying to find out -- or trying to find Hezbollah guerrillas and if they're hiding out in homes?

HARTOV: Well, what happened the other day with the Golani (ph) brigade, when the recon elements, such as it goes, and Golani elements went into Bint Jbeil, was sort of a probing action, and, yes, it was house to house. And there is still house-to-house fighting going on in the outskirts of the town.

What I think is happening now with the call-up of Israeli reserves is that the Israelis are assembling. And it takes a while, because the IDF is so much of a reserve force, it takes a while to assemble, equip, sometimes up-train elements who have just come from their jobs or their homes and get them ready for such an action, which is going to require a major assault to actually take that town.

PHILLIPS: Now, for the civilians that want to leave these certain areas, these strongholds in Lebanon, I asked you about the ones that couldn't get out. You said your sources are telling you Hezbollah holding a lot of these people captive.

I want you to tell me more about what your sources are telling you, but before we do that, we did get a statement from Hezbollah. And this is what the representative said.

"The people that this guy is talking about are our parents, our sisters, our brothers. Hezbollah is not from Mars or the moon. The people who are fighting in Bint Jbeil are from Bint Jbeil."

"They are using civilians as human shields" -- oh, sorry -- "That we are using civilians as human shields, this is something -- the most we can say is that this is silly. The whole world must understand that Hezbollah is not a militia, it is a resistance movement."

Sorry about that. Obviously with the translation, the grammar is a little different there.

But basically saying that that is absolutely ridiculous, that Hezbollah would never do that.

HARTOV: Well, there's a big difference in the Middle East between what you say and what you do. I mean, we have witnessed over the course of many years terrorists and insurgents, Islamic fundamentalists hiding their -- their arms, their armaments, firing from within civilian community centers, having their missile launchers in people's garages, taking them out, firing them and putting them back in. This is not something that we haven't witnessed in many conflicts in the Middle East.

Now, there's a different sort of mentality when it comes to, for instance, a Hezbollah fighter. We might regard the people that he's intermixed with as human shields, and he will regard them as martyrs who can be sacrificed for the cause just as equally as he can. So, it's a different point of view and, of course, we term it all differently.

The Americans in Iraq have seen this sort of activity almost from the day one of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Insurgents on the ground actually holding captives, hostages, hoping to not be targeted for the moment by coalition forces. And the Israelis are seeing the same thing from surveillance aircraft and other methods in the area of southern Lebanon.

PHILLIPS: Steve Hartov, editor in chief of "Special Operations Report," former IDF, always appreciate your insight, Steve. Thanks so much.

HARTOV: Thank you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, the year, 1983. The place, Lebanon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sunday, 23, October, 06:20, a truck bomb destroys BLT (ph).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: The Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and the dreaded feeling of deja vu, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, with no sign of a cease-fire in the Middle East, United Nations officials are worried about the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Let's bring in CNN Senior United Nations Correspondent Richard Roth with a new development -- Richard.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SR. U.N. CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, dire situation in southern Lebanon, according to the U.N.'s humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland. He briefed the Security Council on it and then afterwards told journalists he wants a truce between Hezbollah and Israel to start now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAN EGELAND, U.N. RELIEF COORDINATOR: What we need is the cessation of hostilities that the secretary-general has proposed. I will again go back to the parties, to the Israelis, to the Lebanese, and ask for at least a 72-hour start of the cessation of hostilities so that we can evacuate wounded, evacuate children, evacuate the elderly and the disabled from the crossfire in southern Lebanon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: Regarding his appeal, Egeland said inside the Security Council he got a lot of sympathy, but they didn't seem to be up for any type of decision. It will be up, of course, to Hezbollah and Israel. He said they have contact indirectly with Hezbollah, directly with Israel. Four hundred to 600 casualties in southern Lebanon, one- third of them children, says the U.N.'s humanitarian chief. He says that it is difficult to get access, to get aid in. They can't get give vaccines to children.

They want that truce to get people who want to leave out, to get the elderly and to get children removed. Fierce fighting is hurting access. Also, many bridges and roads are gone -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right. Richard Roth, thanks so much.

Well, duty calls, again. They have been on the front lines in Iraq for a year and thought they were heading home. Instead, they have been ordered to stay. Disappointing news, to be sure, for the troops and their families.

Our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre, has more.

Hey, Jamie.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Kyra.

Well, this involves the 122nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team. They were operating in a dangerous area up in the north near Mosul. Supposed to leave at the end of August. Instead, they got orders approved yesterday by the secretary of defense to begin moving most of their unit to Baghdad.

Some 200 members of the unit already were home, others were on their way through Kuwait when the decision came through. General George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, decided he need those Stryker vehicles, those top-of-the-line armored vehicles for the kind of urban patrols that they're going to have to be doing in Baghdad as they try to reassert authority there.

Obviously this kind of thing can be a morale buster, and today the commander of a different brigade, Colonel John Tully, was asked about the effect that these kind of extensions have on the troops.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COL. JOHN TULLY, U.S. ARMY: A year is a long time over here, and none of us look forward to being extended. But we all knew what the -- what the chances were coming over here. I know before we deployed, the 4th Infantry Division, we told everybody -- the CG, me, everybody told the soldiers it's a year-long tour, but you've got to be prepared to serve longer. And we don't like it, but we're soldiers and we do what we're told.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCINTYRE: Do what they're told. You know, in some way this is harder on the families who are sitting at home worrying about what's going on than the soldiers themselves.

I mean, it's tough, dangerous duty that they're going into in Baghdad, but they'll be -- be very focused on that. And that makes it a little easier to get through the day. Plus, they -- although they've been authorized for up to four additional months, Pentagon officials suggested it might be somewhat less than that before they actually are -- before they're actually brought home -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: What do you think this is going to mean for overall force levels, Jamie?

MCINTYRE: Well, you know, of course there has been a lot of talk about the possibility of significant troop cuts this year, although General George Casey always was careful to caveat that with "assuming conditions permit." The conditions don't permit that, and now, basically what we're seeing with this brigade being held over and the reserve brigade that was in Kuwait having been moved into Iraq, we've gone from 14 brigades in Iraq to 16. So we've actually -- instead of seeing a significant decrease, we've seen somewhat of a significant increase in troops, at least in the short term.

PHILLIPS: All right. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon.

Thanks.

Dozens of cold cases solved? Well, a Colorado convict starts talking, but are his claims of 48 murders on the level?

LIVE FROM has more on the mystery coming your way.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Ever wish you could do a key word search through all of your memories to find that name, number or other piece of essential information? Well, Sunil Vemuri is busy turning that dream into a reality.

SUNIL VEMURI, CO-FOUNDER, QTECH INC.: What I have is a portable device which I carry around with me at all times, and which allows me to record anything that happens in my life.

SIEBERG: The audio is then converted into text by using a sophisticated computer program. And the resulting files are then searchable, similar to what you do when searching the Internet.

VEMURI: The eventual goal of all of this is to help people with every day memory problems.

SIEBERG: But don't expect to see this device on the market anytime soon. Still to be worked out, issues with privacy laws and how to protect these memory recordings from being subpoenaed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Let's get straight to the newsroom. Carol Lin with details on a developing story -- Carol.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Got some pictures from our New York affiliate, WABC. What you are about to see is a garage collapse in Jamaica, Queens.

According to WABC's Web site, firefighters have had to pull several people out from this garage collapse. One person, at least one person has died.

You're looking at their Web site right now as we're showing you the scene there. Obviously, crowd with several different firefighters.

It looks early in the morning, but this happened about an hour ago, Kyra. And they don't know what caused that.

In case anybody up in New York is watching this, you're familiar with the area, the address is 9027 138th Place. It apparently collapsed just before 1:15 this afternoon.

Kyra, that's what we know right now.

PHILLIPS: All right. We'll stay on top of it.

Thanks, Carol.

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