And doesnt spy on your searchs and duckduckgo lets you browse like chrome, but it blocks cooi and creepy ads that follow youa from google and other companie. And theres no catch, its fre. We make money from ads, but they dont follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. Breaking news. Welcome back. We are following the breaking news. New intensity in the war between israel and hamas. We are seeing an increase in explosions over gaza. The idf said their Ground Operation is in their words expanding. Youre looking at live images and were learning from u. S. Officials hostage talks are ongoing. Nic robertson is close to the gaza border in sderot, israel. What are we seeing right now . Looks like weve been watching intercepters during the commercial break. What are you seeing . Yeah. John is pointing the camera at the sky where we were seeing interceptions of rockets towards Central Israel i believe. Those intercepts are over seconds before that, there was a barrage, a salvo of rockets from gaza fired on this location here, the sirens went off. We ducked for cover and we could see the iron dome firing up over our head and intercepting the missiles coming here and right after that to the south of where we are, again, we could see iron dome intercepting missiles coming out of gaza a little bit to our south. I think the picture that he emerges from here in the last ten minutes are missiles fired into cnn entral israel, at the northern end of gaza and then missiles fired a little further south of where we are. At least three salvos in three Different Directions from the same area of gaza. I think if, you know, if this is a response to that very heavy barrage of fire that we saw before outgoing from here, then i think the msage back from hamas would appear to be despite that heavy barrage on to them, theyre able to come out of their bunkers and tunnels and continue to fire back. This evening has really been very much a case of up and down, of a lot of outgoing fire, and then pauses, and then incoming rounds, and then the intercepts, and now perhaps a slight lull. I wont be able to hear you at the moment. Im trying to reconnect to you now. Okay. So Nic Robertson is in sderot. Youre looking at two different Vantage Points from around nics location. Nics camera on the left, an afp camera looking at images over gaza as well. Colonel Cedric Leighton is joining us as we stay on these images. The fact that hamas and other groups kim dozer, Global Affairs analyst, the fact that hamas is still after almost three weeks now of incredibly hew bombardment by israel is still able to fire rockets that were a number of sirens here in tel aviv throughout the day, more so than weve heard in many days, and respond even now at this late hour, what does that tell you . Well, israeli and u. S. Officials have told us they thought that hamas had spent at least a year planning this, at least a year stockpiling the kind of weapons they would need for a sustained response to whatever they trugerred israel into doing, and you see what israel is doing in response is not at least initially the blitz charge into gaza that we all expected but rather what seems like an approach, taking a bit of territory at a time and choosing a few targets at a time and then what we find out from the Israeli Defense forces the next day is they list a number of different targets. No one overnight operation is aimed at one thing. So right now, they could be going after some hostage targets, but there has been, as you and jake both mentioned, a barrage of rockets aimed at tel aviv. So they could be going after that. Kim, quickly, i want to go to Nic Robertson. What are you seeing . Anderson, that was a strange, strange set of events. We were talking about the intercepting missiles and the iron dome fired up from here from further south just to the north of us as well, and as i was standing here, i was listening to a sound like somebody was sweeping the street. The street is deserted. No one lives here. The sound was getting louder and coming up the street and realized this is in all likelihood shrapnel that is raining down a minute after the intercepts in the sky above, the only thing that made logical sense this was shrapnel raining down in the streets here. We took cover, put the helmets on, and took cover. It stopped now, but again, were taught about things we havent seen over previous evening that make the events tonight different. The expanding operational activities are going into gaza. The more Forceful Push that the idf is speaking ability, and these intercepts, the shrapnel coming down after the intercepts are indicative, i think, of the dangers of this situation, frankly, for anyone left living in this town. With heard the idf be specific in their most recent briefing to the citizens of israel saying look, you need to know where your shelter is, you need it know that you can hear the warnings about incoming missiles and intercepts. There are audible warnings, there are apps you can use, and you can also hear the intercepts of the missiles as well, so i think that just reinforces what idf have been warning tcitizens here to stay close to their shelters, the fact that the tempo of operations here is, perhaps, picking up. Weve seen as well a couple of flairs fired in the sky towards gaza. Weve seen those over recent nights, but gone, you would expect flairs to be fired close to or around troops in the field who want to get better visibility on what is the ground in front of them. Illumination to see where the danger is and the enemy hey be hi may be hiding. What we do not know, we heard from rear admiral from the idf saying that Ground Operation in gaza is expanding and do not know to what extent is it expanding. Flares over gaza in certain part of gaza would, perhaps, indicate troops on the ground or movement on the ground in Armored Vehicles and tanks. We have seen over the last day or two some operations and very limited incursions to according to the idf to eliminate any munitions that might be in border areas and reconnaissance posts and to sort of soften and level the ground for the next phase. General wesley clark is joining us. As you see the flares being fired into the air off parts of gaza and what youre hearing from the idf, what do you make of whats going on . I think what we have here is what we would call a reconnaissance in force. Its a large force going in and looking to probe the enemys defenses, find out reaction, collect intelligence, maybe take prisoners, get into the tunnel complex and may or may not stay in. If they find that this is advantageous approach and theres not much resistance an theyre going to a strategic objective there inside gaza, maybe theyll hold their ground. If theres heavy resistance, maybe theyll pull back. I think this is one of those operations where the israelis have multiple options. They can come in from a different direction. They can hold. They can go under ground and deceive the enemy using smoke and other things about where they are. So this is [ inaudible ] [ no audio ] general clark, im not sure if youre still with us. I was having trouble hearing your audio there. If you are, we have seen in past operations the Idf Sort Of Making Faints to see what hamas does in terms of movement of troops and response and a response. Youre saying its possible that is also whats going on here. Some of this could be smaller incursions to kind of see what dominos fall . Thats exactly right. This could be a faint. It could also be something that could expand into a hold operation. If you were planning this operation militarily, you would be asking yourself, what are the key objectives in gaza that we have to control. It could be infrastructure like a Water Treatment plants, it could be power plants, it could be communication facilities. Then the question is, from there, how do you [ inaudible ] the ground so this could be a reconnaissance directed in that specific direction. Global affairs analyst. Theres no regardless of what is happening in this hour, this operation is likely to go on for a very long period of time. Theres it seems like israel, at this point, believes it has time on its side, although certainly as we have seen in past operations, the International Communitys response to operations in gaza does start to take a toll on the pressure that the idf feels. I mean, it does. Look, there has been ranker inside of israel. People want the hospitals out, they want payback. Theres a lot of pressure on the netanyahu government to do something. The targeted raids have taken some of the air out of the balloon. They have been doing something. With the negotiations going on with the hostages through qatar, theres another argument, is hamas just trying to use the negotiations to stay israels hand and draw this out, each day the hostages stay in hamas hand is another day in danger, or do we trust them enough to give this time to work . U. S. Officials believe they were on the verge of something that cnn reported much earlier today, many hours ago, they thought they were about to get several hostages out and that seemed to fall apart and now we have this uptick in attacks. The other thing we could be seeing is, israel has had time to question the four hostages who have been released, possibly they were able to make a map and educated guess as to where the large hall is that a number of hostages are being held that one of the hostages described. Maybe now is the time to break into the nearby tunnels under the cover of darkness and speed and get as many as they can out. Welcome back to our continuing coverage the idf saying that Ground Operation in gaza is expanding. We heard that in our last hour from Daniel Hagari from the idf. Nic robertson in sderot for us, general wesley clark. I lost communications with you before. Just in terms of options the idf has, there are a lot of ways they could proceed from here. People are expecting some massive assault on gaza across the entire length of the border from the sea and air, that may not be what israel has planned. This could be a much slower, more methodical move. I think, anderson, youre actually right. It needs to be a slow, methodical movement. We dont know whether this is the start of it, or simply a reconnaissance in force. Theyve come in different areas. This is the third night theyve done this. This could be a series of probes to see how the palestinians and hamas reacts. It could be an effort to check their weapons systems. It could be an effort to draw communications up so they can get better intelligence or all of that, or they could decide at this point if theres not that much resistance, if theyre headed towards a strategic objective inside gaza like the power plant or the desal point, they may continue and pour more forces in on that corridor. What we know about urban combat is, its easier to get in initially than it is to stay in and hold your force and move to a large r holding. The idea they will move up their forces around the periphery and charge in there, absolutely not. Theyre going to pick their points, go after those points and expand their control outward and downward from that. General clark, this has been one of the contentious points about any Ground Operation, you the scale of us, is it Something Like the u. S. Forces undertook in fallujah or u. S. And iraqi forces undertook in mosul, you know, house by house. There was not the large civilian population in fallujah that there is in gaza city and there was not the presence of some 200 plus hostages. Thats exactly right. The hostages werent there. Fallujah was a tenth of the size of gaza with a tenth of the population and the u. S. Planned the operation for six months before we went in. We had a communication plan, information plan, deception plan, logistics plan, everything staged, and it was still, treemly difficult. About 90 of the population left. Theres one key difference between what the u. S. Did in fallujah and mosul and what the israelis may be intending to do here. We tried to free the city from the terrorists. We wanted to get them out. They wanted to stay, but we left an opening for them when it got too tough, they could flee. We could still accomplish the mission. Here the mission assigned by the Prime Minister is to destroy hamas, and that means, they dont israel doesnt want them leaving to go somewhere else. They want to pin them in there, hold them, and eliminate them. This is a different mission. It probably means tougher fighting. And theres only one way to do it really and thats step by step. Going in fast, going in hasty, increases losses, doesnt ensure the accomplishment of the mission. Israels Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu the other day made a speech in which he said there are two goals to israels operation. First of all, he characterized this as a fight for the existence of israel, but said there were two main goals, the elimination of hamas, both militarily and politically, and also doing Everything Possible to bring back the hostages, to rescue hostages. Are those two goals necessarily the psalm . I mean the tactics to achieve both those goals are they in some ways contradictory . They might be contradictory, but theyre also complimentary in some ways. Because we dont know, israel presumably doesnt know where the hostages are, so as you advance into gaza on the ground, youre intercepting enemy communications, cutting land lines, going into tunnels, capturing prisoners, getting information, and youre always working to sort through where are the hostages. Theres a risk of the hostages are held some place and israel strikes it with a bomb or cannon fire, yeah, you may lose hostages. Its in hamas interest to keep those hostages safe and alive. Theyre using the hostages in a Public Relations game against israel and against the united states, and so they dont want the hostages to be hurt. Now you cant count on that. If youre the parents of someone who is held hostage your heart is going to be in your throat all the time. For israel this is an existential threat. They have to go in, they have to go in on the ground, they have to eliminate hamas, and in the process, hopefully theyll get the information they need then to conduct a Special Operations Raid so the other things that are necessary to get to those hostages. Were going to take a short break and our coverage continues. You want to be able to provide your child with the tools or resources they need. With reliable internet at home, through the internet essentials program, the world opened up. Fellas, fellas. Thats how my son was able to find the hidden genius project. We wanted to give yall the necessary skills to compete with the future. Kevins now part of this next generation of young people who feel they can thrive. We will get back to Anderson Cooper in the middle east where we are tracking new activity in the gaza strip. The idf confirming not long ago that they had expanded operations if gaza. Thats right. Lets go now to Becky Anderson in doha, qatar. What are you tracking from there . Yeah. Its interesting, earlier on today, what a positive note from diplomatic sources who are very familiar with these qatarled talks to try to elicit the release of the 229 hostages, and that number just out of the idfs Press Conference about a couple of hours ago, so were talking about 229 abductees, Mediation Efforts continue, led by the qataris in trying to illicit the release of some of those hostages. It does appear these hostages are being seen as civilians on the one side and military soldiers on the other. Its tonot clear how many are soldiers and civilians. There are foreign nationals and Israeli Citizens and there are women, children, and the elderly. One assumes those have to assume, we havent. Told this specifically, those are the hostages who are being seen as and negotiated for as civilians. So at this stage, earlier on today, its quite late in the evening here now, half past 10 00 in qatar, we were told that these discussions were hopful. There were still issues to be ironed out, but did appear there was a sense of a breakthrough at this point and some sense there might be an announcement in the coming hours. Well, clearly with the news now of the expansion of Israeli Operations this is somewhat delayed. I havent heardi anything furthr from my diplomatic sources for what is familiar going on here. We heard from the Idf Spokesman who was specific and described the holding and negotiation of hostages as psychological terror and cynical use of israeli civilians, i assume he means other as well, the foreign nationals, by hamas. I dont think anybody will disagree with that line. Hostage taking is hostage taking, and it is, im sure, many of our viewers would agree, is psychological terror and use of Israeli Citizens by hamas. The fact is, this is a war and that is whats going on. We await to see whether we can get more information at this point. But certainly, you know, the expanded operations as having been described by the idf as now ongoing, perhaps, obviously, changing the equation somewhat in what was very hopeful signs for the release of some of these hostages. Back to you guys. And becky, we are watching some live pictures here out of gaza, but quickly, these earlier releases we saw of two americans and two israeli hostages, are these seen as a template for something larger, test cases for the process of releasing hostages . That was thats certainly the way that it was described to me, diplomatic sources who had been talking to us last friday on the release of the American Mother and her 17yearold daughter and then on tuesday this week, of course, when you saw the Roo Learelease of two elderly israeli women, it seemed as if there was momentum to this and certainly report