intense bombardment, syrian state tv talking about and showing how their armor is rolling towards that key population city of allepo. hundreds of thousands of people perhaps hiding. we could be talking about an unprecedented humanitarian crisis if they do reach that city. and you have reported in syria, you are in touch with rebel leaders there, rebel fighters. what are they saying about how it is on the front line? we re hearing dozen respect triple that of russian bomb as day. what does that mean on the ground? reporter: they are never seen anything like that. we ve heard that they need assistance now, they need more of the anti-tank missiles you may see in this video here which can target the regime armor. it s tense, it s minute by
only from the open sources that you have. i really can t go there as far as the intelligence information we have but this should come as a surprise really to no one. he has been heavily engaged. sho this has been a troubling trend for the last year and a half, that s true but it is really, really ratcheted up over the last couple months. we re seeing what is happening and this alliance between iran, russia, hasballah and assad s forces in syria, first of all, it is a powerful coalition that s coming together here. no one is doing anything about it. they are obviously preparing the attack on allepo as you reported and that s going to be a tough situation for the people trying to defend allepo. the general directly involved
likely have come from the assad regime. others have come to the same conclusion but the white house is walking a fine line here. in a letter to senators it makes clear the assessment comes from the intelligence community. and the u.n. is pressing for an investigation before taking the next step. still it raises questions, for instance, what option do we have if the white house decides this line has been crossed? that is a great question, richard engel, chief correspondent. thank you, richard, where do we get this information from? is it hard based on what we have been hearing from other intelligence agencies it seems pretty solid, that particularly the british were able to smuggle out some samples that show that sarin gas was used on a very small scale, more than once, including a few months ago in allepo. and i think what is interesting
syria has descended into all out civil war between rebels and pro government forces spanning from it small towns to the nation s largest city of allepo. u.n. officials will meet today to discuss if any hope fordy will he mady low maes can be saved. facebook stock has tumbled to a new low as its early investors were allowed to sell hair stock for the first time thursday. insiders were prohibitrd selling their sock until yesterday and many opted to cash out. facebook stock closed down 6% at just $19 or about half its ipo price in may. mark zuckerberg lost about $600 million in personal wealth on the day s trades, down to, poor thing, $10.2 billion.
it is 5:00 a.m. here in the east. we begin this morning with breaking news. a deadly past 48 hours in afghanistan. new details of two attacks. an effort to derail the transition of power there. the taliban is claiming responsibility for an attack wednesday that left four americans dead, including senior members of an army brigade after an in-ssurgent detonated a suice vest. thomas kennedy and kevin griffin and walter gray were killed along with an american aid worker and afghan interpreter. and nato confirms that three u.s. service members were killed when a sgun man wearing an afghan forces uniform opened fire in the southern helmand province this morning. no claim of responsibility there yet. new details are expected and well be live at the pentagon at the bottom of the hour with more information for you. and now let s take you inside the wisconsin temple where six peoe were killed, three others wounded by a gunman on sunday. this video shot exclusively by cnn showing