bombing. from where the bombings i should say happened. there s a lot of chaos. a lot of army has been deployed to the street. there s blood on the streets. and yeah, it s just a devastating scene. as of now, we ve been reporting no one has claimed responsibility for these twin bombings. no. are you hearing anything new? yeah, i spoke to a member from hezbollah. as you know, this area is considered to be a stronghold of hezbollah. and they are unwilling to name a suspected group but they, you know, one thing i should say really is this is a popular neighborhood, this particular
a very disturbing breaking news coming out of lebanon. an official with the lebanese red cross says at least 37 people are dead, dozens more wounded, following a pair of suicide bombings in beirut. the lebanese capital. journalist is joining us on the phone right now from beirut. you re there on the scene of the bombings. first of all, tell us where they are and what happened. i think we ve lost contact. we re going to try to reconnect. let me update you. a lebanese official telling cnn the death toll clearly is mounting. at least 37 people dead, 181 wounded. those numbers could go up. this bombing struck a shiite suburb in southern beirut. we re told by the lebanese red cross that the explosions hit only minutes apart in this area.
attack to push daish out of that area and push route 47, which is the principal east/west running mode of communication between raqqah and that s an important development. it continues to indicate how with american air power, coalition advice, partners like the peshmerga and other elements within those four nationings are able to make real ground. it seems as if the peshmerga right now are your most re reliable. the kurds are your most reliable partners now. why are we not arming them directly? well, they are being armed. not directly by the u.s. well, they re being they have been armed. 14 nations have been providing support to them. one of the reasons we came to iraq, one of the reasons we committed ourselves, was to restore the territorial integrity of iraq and the sovereignty of the iraqi government over all of iraq. and so we may not be directly providing them assistance, the
strategic city. it s a massive offensive. thousands of kurdish perg mehera fighters are leading the charge. plumes of smoke blacken the skies as coalition bombs target from the air. the strategy is attack the city from three sides. our senior international correspondent nick paton walsh is on the ground for us in iraq. he s very near to this whole sinjar area, closely following what s going upon nick, describe what you have seen because i understand it is very dramatic. from the early hours this morning, wolf, we saw an enormous column of peshmerga we followed around towards the west of the city. that s key because it seems that s where much of the advance today were made by them. their main objective, the peshmerga want to retake sinjar, want to reverse what happened to the yazidi population that happened last year when isis
larger but frankly it may be months away. remember the scenes we saw last year when isis attacked that whole sin jjar area and we saw these children basically being thrown into helicopters, yazidi children, the yazidis really assaulted by these forces. it s been a brutal situation. how important is this town sinjar in and of itself? sinjar in itself is important for a strategic region because it sits on a vital route for the coalition. they talked about the need to cut it off to prevent the flow of fighters and also the black oil trade which many say is key to isis financing but it s symbolic because of the brutality against the yazidis. remember, many of them put in captivity, slavery to some degree. tens of thousands living in mt. sinjar in the freezing cold now, close as they can be to sinjar, their hometown.