for seven and a half days. more than 7000 people are now known to have died and that number is expected to rise and not focuses on getting aid to the thousands who have survived. also in the programme, the new family of the victim was legally stabbed says that her death is of the massive hole in their lives. officials have been explaining more about the series of objects that have been shot down from their airspace. three were shut down this past week and we have just been hearing from the white house sink have not been able to identify with these objects are. but they maintain that this balloon which was shot on the 4th of february was a suspected spy the 4th of february was a suspected spy balloon from china. his national security spokesperson speaking in the last few moments stability were able to determine that china does have a boon for this intelligence collection that is connected to the people s liberation army. it was operating during the previous administration but
from iraq into syria and goes from the critter sled territory but the regime has said that they need to confiscate half of the a delivery from this route and also to confiscate some the ambulances and the material which wasn t accepted by the kurdish administration and so, there is a blockage there, otherwise than the borders in border areas, they have a stalemate in place with groups having state backers and large the comb and conflicts in the new region and also stakeholders are involved. the situation could be brought under control and security threats can be managed by the internal governance issues in the regime of corruption
aircraft. i think both sides will work hard to deconflict that. we have a deconfliction line in place. but it s monday you c, it s mur it s syria. and let s also bring in nick burns, he is professor of diplomacy and international relations at the kennedy school of government. good to have you on board. john heilemann has a question with for you. yeah, mr. ambassador, it s notable that this is not something that happens every day. we haven t had a u.s. shootdown of a hostile jet in around a decade i think. so again from a standpoint of again a casual observer, you look at that and you say is this a sign of some kind of escalation that is at work here or is this sort of a random kind of one off that no one should read too much into? i think it s indicative of a larger problem. syria is a relatively small country. you have the fighting forces of russia, iran, hezbollah and syrian government on wong side.
collide. so admiral, back to you for a second. just back to the first question joe asked you about the iran are attack. does it mean a greater role for iran in that region, do we think that it will escalate more or is this just you tit for tat to push them back off more domestic attacks? unfortunately, i think it s the latter. there is huge immediate i can t coverage of the surface to surface missile launches in tehran, in the kachcapital. they want to show they are striking back, but what iran wants is to dominate baghdad into syria, kdamascus, i can t men. they have a large geopolitical play and they will continue
if it s good for me, it s good for you. and if you were in a white house that what would the chief of staff or the press secretary say to the president about the appearance even? this is why it s become a cliché talking point for politician flacks in d.c., we want take-to-avo to avoid the appearance of impropriety. this is in. because it does raise questions in the minds of americans and around the world about your intentions. there is another way to shed some light on how important this is. when president obama announced the first u.s. military action against isil targets in syria, he was criticized for delaying the commencement of that action, but the reason he delayed it was because he wanted to make sure that the united states would be joined by muslim majority countries. and when that strike was carried out, u.s. military pilots were joined in the air by qatar military pilot, emirati and