darman learns his family in gaza has been killed and his childhood home destroyed and donald trump trying to connect with voters as he rails against the justice system as biden seizes support among that same group of voters taking a dive. john king out front at the magic wall and a reporter now missing in china tonight. is she the latest person to disappear crossing xi jinping? let's go out front. good evening. i'mier en burnett. out front tonight, invading southern gaza. capturing large portions of northern gaza. we have video here which appears to show an israeli tank on one of the few roads that actually runs from north to south in gaza. a road used by those who have had to flee their homes. now, these images are just about three miles north of khan younis, a city israeli defense forces had told people living in gaza city to go to for their safety, but now israel is telling tens of thousands if not a lot more and it is unclear to how many people are still there saying parts of that area are now a, quote, battlefield. i want to warn you that this video is graphic. the red crescent which is on the ground says is them trying to help the injured. they claim this was a strike on homes in southern gaza. we did see a big crater near the rafah crossing overnight, as well. those once again fleeing for their lives it is a confusion, terrifying complicated road to safety and the idf is dropping leaflets like what you see on your screen. you see it in arabic and in there, is a qr code. that qr code is what directs people where to go. i mean, it is a little bizarre to think about that for even justface of it, but there is another another problem. just on the actual reality, there is a near total internet blackout in gaza tonight which would make it completely impossible for anyone to scan the qr code any pull up the instructions on where to go. that should give you an idea how bad this communications blackout is at this very moment. we tried to tape an interview with the red cross spokesman in gaza tonight, but we were unable to get a connection. there's no phone right now and definitely no qr links, but if anyone saw the qr code afbefore the blackout, that's what comes up. certain neighborhoods are highlighted telling people where to go and then there are those arrows. i mean, this is confusing especially given that more than half of the gaza strip home to more than 2 million people is now under evacuation orders. reminder, 25 miles long, and six miles long at its widest and from the entire evacuation order to the growing section of the south, the u.n. secretary-general saying there is nowhere safe to go in gaza including ibrahim, as he was trying to flee to get his family safely out of harm's way. he tells us that tonight one israeli strike yesterday hit his aunt's house where nine of his relatives were trapped. they were killed, all of them. another strike destroyed his childhood home. we'll have more on ibrahim's story in just a moment. we have jeremy diamond along the israel-gaza border and ben wedeman in jerusalem. i want to begin with you, jeremy. israel is expanding that ground offensive in southern gaza tonight, of course, the place where so many millions have been told to go for safety. what are you learning? >> that's right, erin. israel is expanding its ground operations inside southern gaza over the last few days, but today the first tanks have now been spotted inside southern gaza, this as i met up with israel's top tank commander to talk about the central role that tanks have been playing in this war in gaza and that they will continue to play in the southern offensive. as israel expands into southern gaza. [ indiscernible ] >> brigadier general, ibrahim, the head of israel's armored core saying tanks will be central to the urban warfare strategy. >> the area when you attack you have the beginning and attack first and then -- >> israeli tanks were at the tip of israel's offensive in late october, clearing the way for infantry troops to move into densely populated cities. >> you are clearing the way so infantry troops can move in. >> he says this coordination is a lesson learned from russian failures in ukraine. >> translator: we saw that where the russians fought only with tanks alone they were more vulnerable. this combination of combined power overcomes almost every problem on the battlefield. >> israeli tanks are pushing through, not around, residential buildings, reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble to minimize the risk to israeli troops. >> that also means that you have to destroy i lot of residential buildings. >> yeah. that's exactly what we do. we destroy, but we make sure that this building is empty from citizens and we destroy what we have to destroy. >> there are a lot of civilians dying in gaza. >> yeah, but we make sure that before we attack gaza that the citizens are safe. >> israeli tanks have also become a top target. they want to destroy us because for them --? in a series of propaganda videos, hamas fighters are seen ambushing israeli tanks. general ibrahim says these fiery explosions often show the tank's anti-missile systems in action. >> out of commission. >> zero. zero. >> we have a few days and they go back on the battlefield, but destroyed? zero. zero. >> his troops, though, are paying a heavy price. >> translator: the first rpg that fired penetrated and i got hit by the shrapnel. >> general ibrahim said his corps has suffered more per capita than any other. >> translator: this is because we are on the front line. the tank corps is the corps that is winning this war. this is our war. >> and israel is expected to continue relying heavily on its tank forces as it pushes into the south, but general ibrahim told me that he expects the fighting to be much more complicated. hamas has had weeks now to prepare its defenses in the south and they have also been drawing lessons from their fights with israeli forces in the north. erin? >> jeremy, thank you very much for that. it seemed up close the tank warfare hand to hand, as it is there, and as we mentioned cnn journeyalist ibrahim dahman learned that nine of his relatives were killed in an israeli air strike at his aunt's house in gaza yesterday. his childhood home in gaza city was destroyed in another strike. now those of you who watched the program regularly will remember ibrahim because almost every night since the war be gain we were sharing his exclusive dispatches of his nearly month-long effort to escape from gaza with his young family including this harrowing moment when they were speeding through a gaza road amidst massive explosions. [ speaking in a global language ] [ explosion ] [ speaking in a global language ] >> ibrahim, of course, is now out of gaza, but even hearing that i get goosebumps. the last month he and his family were able to evacuate gaza, they crossed into egypt to their incredible relief. [ speaking in a global language ] >> they are safe, but at least nine members of his family are dead in the air strike. ben wedeman who has worked with ibrahim over the years knows him incredibly well is out front. what more can you tell us? >> well, i spoke to ibrahim this morning and ibrahim's been through a lot, and he tries to put on a brave face, but he told me he's lost everything. he's lost relatives. he's lost his childhood home. he doesn't know about his other home in gaza. all his memories, he says, he told me are gone, and he just is sort of in a daze. really, what he's doing now is just focusing on work. in pack, he told one of my colleagues who advised him after hearing the news of the loss of so many members of his extended family that he should take the day off just to get away from work, but he responded that work helps burn the hours. work distracts me from the fact that not only has he lost so much, but he still has parents inside gaza, and that is really occupying his mind around the clock and it's very difficult for people to get out of gaza and in fact, very difficult for people to get out from one part of gaza to another and let alone get out of gaza altogether. so he's struggling. he's struggling, but as i said, he's trying to distract himself by work, and i've known ibrahim since he had a full head of hair. he was just a kid, and he's always been enthusiastic about the work and when he had got a full-time position with cnn i've never seen a colleague so happy and proud. everything that he did he put his entire soul into the work, and so when i heard and many of us heard what had happened to him, to his extended family, we all reached out to him. i think he was overwhelmed with the amount of phone calls and messages that he received. i hope he understands that we all care about him. we hope his family that's still in gaza is safe that they can survive this war and he can get back to work in his home. >> and i know that he has put his soul into it and has made such incredible sacrifice and his willingness to share this and document for the world to see with the children out there and his wife. all right, ben, thank you very much. i appreciate it. and i want to go straight to the israeli defense forces lieutenant colonel jonathan kernrickas. you heard ben wedeman talk about our producer who had documented day by day his leaving northern gaza getting to the south and getting to egypt and his extended family killed in a strike yesterday. at least nine of them and you heard ben talking about ibrahim. he said one other things about his relatives, he said they were extremely peaceful and simple people. they have no affiliation with any organization or group. what do you say to him and his family after the israeli strike this weekend? >> yeah. i saw the footage, and i've actually followed his documentation of the ordeal that his family went through. i saw it on cnn, and as i was waiting for interviews a few weeks ago i saw that, and i feel for the man. i am sure that he's -- his family, i trust that what he says is true that they were not affiliated and it appears that they are the unfortunate and sad consequences of a war. i don't know the specifics of where the house was and what happened there. i don't know what impacted, but i can say that if they were not affiliated with any terror organization then they were not a target and not the enemy, and at this stage i cannot provide anything but words of sympathy to him and his family, and i hope that he's sach fe, and i h that other civilians are safe and other civilians forced out of their homes, 250,000 of them are safe and that they'll be able to return to their homes at the end of this war. >> colonel, of course, the reality of it is is the horrible tragedy that touches ibrahim now personally is touching so many. according to the afp, senior israeli military officials have said around two civilians have been killed for every hamas fighter that you have successfully killed in the gaza strip. so that's two civilians for every terrorist. can you confirm that? >> i can confirm the report, and i can say that if that is true, and i think that our numbers will be corroborated. if you compare that ratio to any other conflict in urban terrain between a military and a terrorist organization using civilians as a human shield and embedded in the civilian pop, you will find that that ratio is tremendously positive and perhaps unique in the world. i understand that there are civilian casualties, and i understand that footage and coverage goes towards emotions and to cover those civilian casualties, but what i want to say is that we will get those figures out and they will be oible and by the idf behind. i don't know if they'll be able talking about the terrorist comes we are not after the civilians and we're going through great efforts in order to keep it that way. >> it is, of course, hard to comprehend two-for-one, but when you say you're going to great efforts and one of the efforts is the idf directions and i don't know if you plugged in and i shared the directions for the evacuation. >> yes. >> so you know there's the qr code, right? and then when you click on it -- you can't right now because there's a blackout, but if you were to click on it and you were to see where to go in this urban area, and tiny little parcels, block by block, numbers, i suppose? it's hard to even read it. how do you really expect anybody to get that, to click on it, to see it which they can't do because of the blackout and to follow the directions and to get somewhere safely. i mean, is that reasonable? >> i think, erin, that it may not be perfect, but it is the best thing that we can do. the situation is that for weeks we have designated a humanitarian zone and we have been asking civilians to go there. unfortunately, civilians for various reasons because they are under the control of hamas, because international aid organizations have channeled them there, many other reasons have not yet gone to the humanitarian zone which i think is very unfortunate and the reason why we made that or designated that humanitarian zone is because it's one of the few areas where hamas isn't embedded above and below ground and therefore, a relatively safe area because we would have no interest in fighting there because hamas isn't there, and that's what we've been asking all along and the attempt or what you showed on the map and the not perfect. bithe way, i contest blackouts and i saw lots of live footage, as well. >> tonight, though, there is. i was actually going to interview the spokesperson for the red cross. we were unable to get communications, colonel, for 45 minutes and there are widespread blackout tonight. >> i've seen the spokesperson of unicef on cnn and other living network and i think there isn't really such a blackout because evidently he has service and many others have and there's video coming out. listen, i understand that it is not perfect and this is what we're trying to do. we are trying to reach out to palestinians and trying to inform them ahead of time where fighting is going to be in order for them to be able to take precautions and move from where there's going to be fighting. i don't know how else we can square that circle of defeating hamas and minimizing cyst civilian calories. >> we are open suggestions that has to go with defeat hamas or having damage to civilians. >> colonel, one final point on the blackout that's been going on in the past few hours. there was video earlier and that's why we had the interview scheduled with the red cross and the blackout affecting most of gaza has been in effect. do you know if it's been resolved? do you know why it's in place? >> i am not aware of a blackout and there have been reports of it, but i see live streaming by palestinian prop gandists from various areas including from 20 minutes ago, and i watched it live with the notorious prop gandists. he was live and there is wi-fi and maybe not specifically with the red cross like you were speaking with, but i am factually aware that there are live internet services in gaza. not perfect and not 5g manhattan speed and there is international service. >> colonel, i appreciate your time, sir. >> thank you for having me. terror plots. police in las vegas arrest a 16-year-old who had bomb making materials and an isis flag. john king with the latest out front battleground why more and more black voters are saying this. >> i do not feel confident as a black man in this country to vote for joe biden. and the mother of one of the three mrrn college students shot is my guest. her son hihisham a arwatani non paralylyzed from t the chest d . tonight, u.s. terror plot foiled. a 16-year-old boy arrested after las vegas police say he was ready to launch isis-inspired terror attacks. police said they made i series of disturbing discoveries at his home including isis propaganda and bomb making materials. let's go straight to our chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst john miller. so, john, you hear this in the context of, you know, what we're hearing from israel and from gaza. how real -- how real and how imminent was this threat? >> how real was dictated by really the boldness of the post that they saw placed in one of these message boards which said peace be upon all of the brothers who see this. i am here to announce that i will be starting lone wolf operations in las vegas against the enemies of allah. i am a supporter of the islamic state, and i will make sure the zionists in this city know it. so with that as a starting point the las vegas metro police, the fbi joint terrorism task force working together were able to trace from that messageboard to a location where deputy chief of the las vegas metro police dory koran will tell us what they found. >> our search revealed numerous items of concern to include terrorism propaganda and materials to indicate the suspect's intebnt to commit an act of terrorism. some examples include a handmade isis flag which you can see a photo of. isis and al qaeda propaganda, radicalization materials to conduct a terrorist attacks and components for building an improvised explosive device and bomb making recipes and instructions. >> that gets to the heart of your question, how imminent was it. there are stages to this. it's radicalization and then mobilization toward violence which is taking actual steps. what they found in there was everything you needed to make a bomb except the explosives and that's a timer, a power unit and a detonator. >> this is right up to the line. ? right. and the research that we're finding into the chemical components like tatp which you can buy at any big box store by putting together three or four things told them that this could be imminent. one thing that they didn't indicate that he had chosen a particular target. >> right. the tactics are knife and hammer accord cording to the i've iltou you have officials that thshgs warded a wrought een in germany. i remember years ago right after brussels and after paris and the bataclan we were hearing things liepg this. remember in lyon? it was like that. >> it is like that and the driver here and the threat picture is the images that are coming in from gaza and isis is already natural and well developed talent for creating dramatic propaganda. now with this imagery of suffering, destruction and death they are able to say you have to rise up. the remarkable thing here is the truck bomb targeting the christmas market in west valia in germany was put together by a 15-year-old and 16-year-old. in las vegas we're seeing another 16-year-old. in paris, we saw a 26-year-old man, but this was his second time around. he been charged earlier and served time in an earlier terrorist plot. so we will see this churning for a while. >> yeah. and it seems to be starting up. john mill are, thank you very much, very sobering tonight. out front next? >> why biden is spending time wooing back voters who were once the most reliable democrats. john king at the magic wall with his latest in our series the battlegrounds and george santos apparently has already found a new job. >> hi, katie. thank you for the love. thank you for the kindness, you know, botox keeps you young. fillerers keeps you u plump. nice footwork. man, you're lucky, watching live sports never used to be this easy. now you can stream all your games like it's nothing. yes! [ cheers ] yeah! woho! running up and down that field looks tough. it's a pitch. get way more into what you're into when you stream on the xfinity 10g network. ♪ ♪ tonight, donald trump's bid to overturn his gag order in the new york fraud case has been denied. the gag order now in place at least through trump's anticipated testimony on monday. of course, this is just one of several trials trump is facing. as you know, through it all he's been raging through the justice system saying it is unfair which is something that he has said connects him specificall