reporter: this man clears out his mother s house. through the kitchen window he can see the police team search for her body. the mobile was found in the kitchen. she had tried to call tanaka six times after the earthquake, but there was no reception. her last attempt was 3:16, just before the tsunami hit her hometown of kamaishi. what i can do to find her is limited. i appreciate volunteers helping me, but they can t do anything with debris like this. you need professionals. this team is the first to search this area, a search-and-rescue team they are trained to find life, but it s much too late for that. it s been three weeks since the earthquake and the tsunami, and more than 16,000 people are still unaccounted for. crews are working systematically through vast areas of debris to try and find the bodies so at
at the carnage under way in misrata. and day of protests across the middle east. troops turn their guns on the crowds in syria. witnesses report many casualties. breaking news and political headlines all straight ahead. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. moammar gadhafi s forces are besieging and battering the city of misrata. there are fears right now that a massacre could happen. fred pleitgen was there. he was able to reach the city on a humanitarian ship. he is back on the island nation of malta right now. he s safe and secure. he s joining us now with more on the exclusive look at the fighting and the destruction that he eyewitnessed. it s a pretty remarkable story, fred, that you saw. reporter: yeah, it is a pretty remarkable story because misrata is really an island
bowl ads, but now the ceo of the company finds himself in the middle of a very different type of controversy. cnn s lisa sylvester s joining us now. she s been following the story. lisa, it all revolves around the video of an elephant hunt in africa, isn t that right? reporter: that s right, wolf. this video has gone viral. bob parsons is being ripped for not just shooting the elephant but also posting the video online. now, i spoke to him today, and he said he was actually caught off guard by the backlash. in the video, shot in zimbabwe, bob parsons shows what appears to be elephant tracks through the crop fields of a local farmer. this is a prime example of the damage these elephants have been causing in the sorghum field. just hammered. they ve been here three nights in a row. we re hoping they come back for a fourth. and if they do, well, we re going to be here to greet them. reporter: parsons, the ceo of godaddy.com, and his group, are waiting. he fires two shots, killing th
good reporting. raging bat unless libya today and a surprising round of talks. opposition leaders laying out some conditions for a truce with moammar gadhafi s forces, including an end to the siege in misrata and freedom of expression for the libyan people. the rebels say their ultimate goal is regime change. we ve just received a response from the gadhafi regime. let s go to tripoli. cnn s senior international correspondent nic robertson is joining us. nic, what s the response from the libyan regime? reporter: well, the government spokesman here called the conditions of the cease-fire silly. he said that it would be impossible to implement. they weren t serious. essentially the government here appears to be rejecting out of hand this cease-fire that s been called for by the opposition. the spokesman here said that the government remains ready to talk with the with anybody in the international community, in
on what we re seeing, to confront a professional army like the gadhafi army. they would definitely have to rely on the nato air power if that s going to happen. all right, thanks very much for that, reza sayah in benghazi for us. the rebels want them lifted as a port of any truce. but the gadhafi regime trues that as a nonstarter. and joining us from tripoli, our own nic robertson. nic, is there any optimism at all that any of the back channel, front channel talks will really result in a cease? reporter: i don t think there s any immediate hope in it, wolf. i think certainly there are a lot of people here wish diplomacy would pick up, that wish there were back channels that were working. it really depends who you speak to. certainly the government spokesman has dismissed the rebels from a cease fire, calling the conditions silly and impossible.