Today as we come on air right now, its in washington, just after 7 00 in israel and gaza. On the israeli side, sirens are sounding, on the gaza side, the power supply is down. Cnn correspondents are on the front line of this war, miles from the gaza border, thats where Nick Robertson is right now, nick, what are you seeing there . Reporter we are hearing heavy detonations and gaza from Artillery Rounds that are being fired. Weve seen heavy artillery in placements, a few miles from here earlier on in the day. They were there yesterday but they are there today. These heavy rounds appear to be targeting the places where hamas might be trying to fire their rockets from but we are also hearing drone activity, we are seeing that behind me there. What you just heard was another one of those Artillery Rounds, impacting sorry to interrupt you. Nick, we just have to get to the president of the United States. He is speaking. This attack has brought to the surface this moment, we have to be crystal clear. There is no justification for terrorism. No excuse, and the type of terrorism that is exhibited here is beyond the pale. Beyond the pale. As i said yesterday, my commitment to israels security and the safety of the jewish people is unshakable. The United States will be working on this all through the day and beyond. I apologize for keeping you waiting. Thank you becky, for that introduction and for sharing your story. Thats familiar to so many families, this gets down to a basic problem, basic circumstance, you know folks are tight youre listening to President Biden who opened a discussion there at lighthouse by making clear that there is no excuse for terrorism and the u. S. And he in particular is committed to the safety of israel and noteworthy he used the term jewish people. I want to go back to nick, youre in a dangerous and precarious situation. Im so sorry for interrupting you. Please continue with what you are reporting with what you are seeing there. We were seeing some tank fire down behind me, sort of in the dark, you cant really see it but its sort of wideopen, rolling hills, dusty field, if you will, and sand down towards the fence, and weve heard over the past 24 hours, tanks operating and maneuvering in that area. We sought to rounds fired by a tank. We dont know why, we dont know what the purpose of the fire was. We do know from our Vantage Point here, we know there are more troops in this town, more troops around the region. Weve been driving along the border with gaza, we may have another loud explosion behind me in a second, it may happen thats thanks to john our cameraman you can see the flashes and the horizon behind me, when he sees that flash, theres another one, hes telling me, a few seconds before you hear the huge explosion, some of the explosions have been so big, they rattled the windows of the building. So the dynamic is an increased military presence, weve seen more troops deployed close to the border here. More heavy armored fighting vehicles theres another one of the explosions, just such a heavy thud an impact on the ground inside gaza, but you get the sense that the tempo is moving up. There are more troops here. More troops patrolling the streets. More troops deployed in the countryside close to the work border. Where the next piece of this puzzle is, we dont have site on that but i cant say, what we do have site on is just a building and building of a strengthening military presence. Stay as safe as you can, thanks to you and your team for being out there and telling us what is coming, the tempo is moving up. That is certainly an important sentence. One of mark many important sentences. And i want to now go to news that is just coming into cnn, the idf said they received reports of infiltrators crossing the border from lebanon. Theyre going into israeli airspace. We were just talking to nick who is on the border with gaza, you are talking about a different front, in the north of israel. Dana, this is also the front that worries people because of hezbollah and their present there. We are just receiving information from the Israeli Military that sirens have been going off across all of northern israel. I want to show you this, this is an app that shows you where there are alerts, and you might be able to see that bunch of red because that is the entire northern part of israel. Almost all of them have seen sirens of some kind. They are saying a suspected infiltration from lebanon into israeli airspace. We are not clear if these are gliders, drones, or Something Like that, Israeli Media is reporting there have been some sort of aircraft cited, i received another alert, there is a suspected Terrorist Infiltration in one of the parts of the north, the biggest fear is not only hezbollahs involvement but if these are the paragliders that we saw from hamas to the south, if they have militants on the ground that might be landing and trying to infiltrate communities in the north, most of the communities in the north are well aware of whats been happening in gaza so they are being advised to not only go into the safe room but now to lock their doors, go inside and stay inside of a safe room. Based off of the number of sirens that went off, it could be a big number but its not clear whether this is a bunch of drones being sent up to sort of cause these alerts to go off and cause panic or whether these are actually manned aircraft, with militants on them trying to seek to harm israeli civilians in the north of the biggest question, who is behind this . Hamas does have a presence in Southern Lebanon but hezbollah control Southern Lebanon but what will the response be . The bigger take his fear is that the north will blow up as of hezbollah gets involved, this raises the war to an entirely different level. Hezbollah is one of the reason why you see the carrier off the coast of israel. Its because of actors like hezbollah. It was a little bit hard to see your phone, so if you can explain to people who arent familiar with the system that are there in place for people and as im asking you the question, we have a map that can better allow viewers to understand what we are talking about when we speak of the north, the northern part of israel and talking about the border with lebanon, number 1 if you can explain again what the red dots on your alert system on your phone showed and also if you can explain to her viewers what we are talking about, we dont know as you said very clearly and we should , we do not know what is in the sky, but we do know, we believe, what capability, when it comes to guided missiles that hezbollah has in Southern Lebanon . Reporter so first off, israel is blanketed in a system that can alert people ahead of time whether there are rockets incoming or other things could be coming in in the sky, and each part of israel is broken up into very specific areas. So thats why if a siren goes off because the radar recognizes that a missile is likely to land for example, south of where i am in southern jerusalem, the alarm will only go off in southern jerusalem, the alarm for me will not necessarily go off. So i may not have to go into a safe room. So thats why its incredible to see, essentially the entire north is being told that sirens are going off and they need to go into protective space because normally when you have these rockets, it can be rather specific, you might be able to hear the sirens, you can also hear the explosion, but this is why all of those red dots represent a separate specific area that can have sirens going off just for that area to advise residents to go into a protective space. And thats why it is worrying to see the northern part of the country blanketed in these red dots. Hadas, thank you so much. We will get back to you. I want to go back to Nick Robertson, who is on the border with gaza. Nick, what are you seeing there in the night sky . Reporter fighter jets are trying to put out a signal, weve seen more tank rounds in the last few minutes. When i was speaking to before, apparently some tank rounds were fired off behind me. And a barrage of smaller artillery while hadas was speaking. Its that tempo, its the continual pushing and pushing and pushing on gaza by the Israeli Defense forces as they bring more and more firepower into the place. They can hope that they can suppress some of the rocket fire thats been outgoing. I will pause for a second and may not be able to hear your questions as i just try to reconnect to you. Nick, im not sure if you can hear me, i understand as i said before, you are in a war zone, and can you hear me now . Reporter the phone lines do occasionally go down here. I mean, yeah, and the electricity goes off and then you can have a Phone Connection but not internet connection. And i think some part of that, that we see on the ground is when there is a hamas cell detected, very quickly, the Security Forces move on, move into the area. But things are done to isolate them like switch off the power, perhaps deny Internet Access through the phone. These sorts of techniques. It is a volatile situation, thats probably an understatement. When you move out of here come out of this town, when you move further around the countryside, was mentioned before about the security on the roads and the government has put a very big Security Court if you will, around many miles beyond that gaza border to have this large buffer zone now. That not only has the troops inside of it and the police force inside of it but an area that civilians will find it hard to get into as well. Nick, thank you so much to you and your team. We really appreciate it. Here to talk about what we just heard from her excellent reporters inside israel is former nato Supreme Allied Commander retired general Philip Breedlove and james clapper. Director clapper, i will start with you about what we heard from hadas about the alerts that they are getting all over the north in israel about incursions, possible incursions from lebanon . Well, this is obviously not a Good Development at all and the last thing we really need in the situation is a two front confrontation with hamas and gaza and hezbollah out of lebanon. So first reports are never quite accurate, so i think we need more information to know exactly whats going on. Im quite sure that whatever efforts can be made to prevail upon the lebanese government, which is probably not going to get much out of that, for the iranians to suppress hezbollah and stop the violence there. But again, its a little early to know just whats going on, obviously israeli is in better position to react and in fact, they already have, they were caught by surprise in gaza. So for my poor as an intel person we need more information. General, thoughts on what we heard from our reporters on the ground . I dont think its surprising, i will file onto something Director Clapper said. A two front war is a bigger problem, and something we had hoped to avoid, i believe but i think we have to recognize that iran is pulling the strings here and iran understands that a two front war is going to cause israel much more problems, so i think we expected this from the beginning, as many others have. Director clapper, staying on the topic of iran. Sources continue to tell cnn that the u. S. Has selected specific intelligence that iran did not play a direct role in the hamas terror attack. First of all, how can the Intelligence Agencies be so sure about a negative, meaning how can they be so sure that iran didnt, and i should say, we should make sure our viewers understand that iran has been very active for years in Financing Hamas and hezbollah, but in this question is taking a role in actually planning the attack. Right, i dont have any insight on what has led to the reporting apparently that the u. S. Intelligence community has positive information that the iranians werent aware necessarily of the attack or more probably its timing. That said, iran as the general indicated is clearly influential here. They have provided weapons and training to the likes of hamas and hezbollah. As to what led to that, it could have been any number of things that has led the community to come to that conclusion to include perhaps signal intelligence or some other indirect intelligence, Human Intelligence that has led them to that conclusion. I will say finally, though, historically, hamas and iran have not had a real intimate relationship. Its much different between iran and hezbollah. Thats really interesting as a historic point of reference. General breedlove, going back to what we heard from Nick Robertson close to the border with gaza, hes been there since this started on saturday. He talked about the tempo increasing, the feeling that he has near the border of the idf moving closer to the border, what does that tell you . Well, we are all anticipating the eventual push into gaza. I would expect that as they get closer to that push, they are going to start trying to affect those closed in targets that would be the first threat that their forces would face, as they go over the berms and over the knockdown portions of the wall, et cetera, that they will have to do to get into gaza. So, as weve talked about many times in the last 2 to 3 days, this business of attacking into a densely packed, urban area, dents in buildings and structures and people, this is a hard job. The very best of our military worry about this job. Its not something that is taken lightly by anyone, and when it happens, both sides are going to take casualties. So israel will be doing the preparatory fires, we call it, setting the scene or setting the conditions for that initial entry, which will be one of the most dangerous portions of the mission. No question about that and what you are alluding to is the fact that you have more than 2 Million People in a very densely populated, small area, i should say. A lot of civilians there. Thank you both, incredible to have both of you, former nato Supreme Allied Commander breedlove and former director of National Intelligence james clapper. Thank you. Up next a member of the House Intelligence Committee will be here to tell us what hes hearing about the possibility of irans involvement in the hamas terrorist attacks. Stay with us. You are looking at images from moments ago. This is a town that is in the north of israel but not that far north, and this helps to describe what hadas gold was explaining what she saw on her phone as part of the alert system that israel has, sirens go off and it is a signal for people to take cover to go into safe rooms and spaces, and this is the scene moments ago in that town. We do not know the specifics of what prompted these Emergency Alerts to go off according to hadas gold all across the north of israel, and looking at a map which we will show you shortly, this goes down to haifa. The Biden Administration is trying to figure out whats happening with american families, with missing loved ones in israel, whether the relatives are dead or alive. Mj lee joins me live from the white house. What are you learning . What im being told by a u. S. Official is that the Biden Administration still does not know anything about the condition of american hostages that have been taken by hamas. As you remember yesterday, the National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said they estimate there are some 20 americans that are currently missing and unaccounted for, and they dont know how many have been taken hostage. That number im told, would be revised down if anyone in that group is determined to have been killed and this is a very grim possibility. Im told the administration is very much bracing for that. I should tell you also theres this cross government effort thats currently underway to try to get a better handle on the american Hostage Situation. I am told there are phone calls that are coming into the u. S. Embassy in israel, the fbi, the white house as well, from Family Members and friends, who believe they have information about somebody they know who has been taken hostage or is missing, but a part of the publication is that we are talking about, eyewitness accounts and some of them are secondhand accounts so really theres a real challenge in trying to verify the information that these various agencies are getting. As for the u. S. Ops that have been im told this is not an extraction, theres not some physical effort underway, currently no us troops on the ground to physically get out the american hostages that are believed to be in gaza. So this is a bit of an effort to show you what the efforts are underway by the administration, to try to get a better handle on the Hostage Situation which obviously is a top priority for the president. I should note that he did just speak again, for the fourth time with Prime Minister benjamin netanyahu. Thank you for that reporting and as mj was reporting on the unaccounted for americans, we got new information from the State Department that at least 22 u. S. Citizens have died in israel. At least 22 u. S. Citizens have died in israel. With that, i want to bring in, Guzman Jason Crow of colorado, a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Lets start with what we just heard from mj about the unaccounted for americans. Is there anything that you can tell us, as somebody who has been bri