>> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. >> welcome back to cnn news central. we're following two breaking stories happening right now. prime minister benjamin netanyahu just spoke after a major hostage deal was finalized between israel and hamas. we're also following a developing story out of new york state. two are dead and the fbi is on the scene after a vehicle exploded at the u.s./canada border crossing near niagara falls. sources say a car carrying two male occupants exploded on its way to a secondary search location at the checkpoint at the rainbow bridge. we know president biden is receiving updates and the white house is in touch with canadian officials. we'll bring you the latest from upstate new york. first, we want to listen to prime minister netanyahu who is speaking for the first time since the deal was announced. >> translator: and the hostages, since the beginning of the war i cannot stop thinking about them and the members -- i met you. i heard from you what is going on with you, what you're going through. the continuous nightmare. knowing and the worry has no limits. when i meet with you, you -- the focus on your loved ones. and me and my friends look at every single photo. these photos are -- we operate to bring home everyone. when i say everyone, i mean everyone . we will bring back the hostages and ensure that gaza will not be a threat anymore. we will act to create conditions -- the framework are efforts -- >> all right, so there you hear the prime minister of israel, benjamin netanyahu, making his point, that he's not going to rest until all the israeli hostages have been returned safe and sound to israel. he's insisting that the war, the effort to try to destroy hamas in gaza, will continue. all this happening just hours before this exchange is about to unfold. the first of several israeli hostages we're told are about to be released. we'll watch that very closely. see how israel is going to deal with that. how these hostages will be coming back to israel and all of that. that's supposed to happen in the coming hours. but, boris, we're also watching this major story coming out of niagara falls, new york. this incident that has occurred aboard the -- on top of the rainbow bridge separating the united states and canada. i know you're getting more information. you're watching these breaking developments as well. >> yeah, wolf. i think the world is on heightened alert right now given the story you're covering in the middle east and obviously as we approach the thanksgiving holiday, many travelers are hitting the road and taking to the skies to be with their loved ones. so as this is unfolding, we're trying to get the latest details to find out whether this was something nefarious. that's why we want to bring in john miller who has been covering this story. your latest reporting is that security footage from the crossing appears to show a vehicle on a local road in the united states at one point hitting a dramatic rate of speed, something close to 80 miles per hour before approaching the crossing, and then becoming airborne as it hit a curb and exploding on impact. what's the latest you're hearing from your sources that have reviewed that footage. >> they're trying to determine what it all means. when you look at the car in the footage, you see it passing all the other cars at the high rate of speed. you see it engages with the curb and then goes flying over a barrier, crosses to the other side of the highway and then upon impact, literally disintegrates while exploding in a ball of flames and black smoke. this is the high-energy impact of a car traveling at a high rate of speed that is airborne and flying at a high rate of speed with great force which facts on the ground. that is the kind of thing that you don't really need an explosive device to get a spontaneous combustion on a high-energy impact with a full tank of gas. it also explains, boris, a lot of the early confusion and that's why we always say in this reporting, the information is preliminary because the first story usually does change. they believed it was coming from the canadian side towards the united states because it ended up on the other side of the road in the secondary search area which would have been the direction you would be going when you were headed to the united states. it wasn't clear until they saw the video, it had actually started on a local road in niagara falls where it jumped the divider. so it's not even clear that the car intended to leave the country, and that brings up the possibilities. do we have an incident of a driver under the influence? is it a driver with a medical issue? is it a driver who decided to commit suicide? is it a driver who had an untended acceleration and lost control of the car? those are all going to be questions. and the fbi's joint terrorism task force, the atf, the canadians authorities, they're all at the scene trying to literally put the pieces back together in terms of this vehicle where it impacted. but try and identify who is the operator of the vehicle? who is the person who is with them? what's their background and what can they learn from their travels today. before this incident, what was going on in their life from friends and family? that is the main focus right now, who is the person at the wheel, and what can that tell us? >> john, please stand by. i do want to just point out that we were looking at new images of the scene at the crossing. these were the closest images that we've seen to this point of what john was just describing and you see flames and smoke there, clearly a very serious crash and explosion. we do want to play some sound for you as well because the canadian prime minister spoke about the incident in the last hour. here he is. >> a lot of questions. we're following up to try to get as many answers as rapidly as possible. we're in close contact with u.s. officials and will continue to work closely with them. we will continue to be engaged. we will provide updates. updates i can give right now is there are four border crossings that are right now closed. rainbow bridge, whirlpool bring, queenston bridge. additional measures are being contemplated at all border crossings across the country. we are taking this seriously and i will have to excuse myself to get further updates. >> we should also point out that the president, joe biden, who is traveling to nantucket for the thanksgiving holiday has been briefed on the situation. we understand that top-level officials in both the united states and canada are going over all the latest details as they try to sort out exactly what happened at the rainbow bridge. i want to discuss with former deputy director of national intelligence. when you look at the details that we're getting about this incident, what stands out to you? >> well, i think that the way that john miller is really approaching this and andrew mccabe is exactly the right way. i used to be in charge of new analyst training at cia and one of the things we teach new analysts is to not just go to your assumptions right away but to really piece through the facts at hand slowly and methodically and try to ignore the pressure to come to an answer because usually that first answer that your brain will lead you to is going to be incorrect. so there are a lot of assumptions going in because we're really thinking about the testimony last week by fbi director wray talking about this incredibly heightened state of alert that we are now in. and those are really real things. but these things, you know, may not and it looks increasing like not connected. >> we also have a retired fbi agent with us. robert, your read of the situation based on the details that you've heard? >> right now with john miller's input that they have a video of the vehicle going is huge. they blow up cars all the time and due to iraq and afghanistan, our knowledge of vibds is immense. they're going to look at this video and even from the video, they're going to be able to start looking where that explosion was actually initiated. was it high explosives? you can tell by some of how the debris is thrown out of an explosion, at the rate of speed, was it high, was it low? they're going to have local teams with technical stuff. even if it's not safe, they can send robots down to take samplings. all of this sufficient is going to go into different bomb techs. they're going to send it down to quantico where the national guys are at and they're going to start looking for it and start analyzing those videos. we used to study them all the time when we did explosive work and the start of it and how the explosion goes and how the vehicle comes apart, like i said, they do that all the time and they can literally just take the video and start looking at it and come up to a better determination. >> so, robert, to that point, what would the time line be here to get a definitive answer as to whether this was terrorism? >> they're not going to come off with a definitive answer because even if it wasn't a high-explosive initiation of the vehicle, it could be something that had some type of terrorism background. but what they're going to be looking at is how this vehicle exploded, they're going to come back and say was there high explosives in it? what was created by it? and walk that backwards. they're going to interview the family members. was there something going on in the family members that were killed that were in the vehicle that would indicate something else? but i think the biggest thing, if they can determine, hey, that was a high-explosive initiated vehicle, then it's going to ramp it up a little bit. if they really determine that it's not looking that way, i think you can start looking at other things coming in, probably have ntsb coming in because they deal with vehicle explosions all the time and bring those experts in and start looking at that scene with the jttf. >> beth, back to you. you mentioned the heightened state of alert that we're currently in given everything that's been happening in the world and the warnings that we've gotten from top u.s. officials about the potential for some kind of nefarious activity. it's obviously a very challenging window of time that officials are also working. and given that tomorrow is the thanksgiving holiday and some two-plus million people are going to be traveling, it's a very sensitive time for soft targets specifically, right? >> exactly. i mean, this is definitely what we're seeing across the militant world from aq to i.s.i.s., to hamas, to hezbollah is messaging that's going out that is trying to inspire americans and anyone else to take violent action, particularly against jews. and so -- and i think that as director wray said, this is not a time for panic, but it is a time for vigilance. and so, you know, i would just encourage everybody to, you know -- i mean, i hate to take us back to 9/11, but we need to pay attention to stray backpack and is where you are in your surroundings and to take extra precautions. these threats are at a heightened state that we haven't seen for decades. >> beth, please stand by. i want to go to arlette saenz who is traveling with president biden in nantucket, massachusetts, traveling for the thanksgiving holiday. arlette, the president has been briefed on what's happened at the rainbow bridge near niagara falls, what's the latest you're hearing from the white house? >> reporter: the latest that we've heard is that president biden has been briefed. the white house saying he was briefed on the vehicle explosion at rainbow bridge, but beyond that, the white house has not shared any other details about what they believe this incident might have involved. now, the president in addition to being briefed by his team, the white house has noted that there's law enforcement on the ground investigating this. that includes the atf and fbi and there has always been communication between white house officials and senior canadian officials as well, that's according to one administration official that i had spoken with. at the same time, transportation secretary pete buttigieg, he himself said he's also been briefed and is also in touch with their counterparts. the president has been updated, but it's clear that it's a situation that is fluid and they're still gathering information on. and it comes as president biden is here in nantucket, massachusetts, where he's spending the holiday with family. it's not a vacation. it's a working trip for president biden. he stays in contact with his team back at the white house. just this afternoon the president has been balancing another situation, holding calls with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu as that hostage negotiation, the potential hostage release is expected to come in the coming hours. president biden right now is balancing those two things, discussing both these potential hostage release that could be coming in the next day, as well as getting these latest updates on the incident that's occurred at the rainbow bridge. >> arlette, thank you so much for the update. our breaking news coverage is going to continue on the incident at the u.s./canada border in just moments. don't go anywhere. we're continuing to follow the breaking news from the rainbow bridge at the u.s./canada border crossing. right now the fbi is investigating a vehicle that exploded there at a security checkpoint. officials confirm that two people inside that car are deceased. you're looking at images we received a short time ago very close up of the scene. vehicle parts scattered throughout that border crossing. we have new information about something that's happening at the buffalo airport which is not far from niagara falls. let's go to pete muntean who is live for us at reagan national. what are you learning about the buffalo airport? >> reporter: we're hearing things change by the moment both locally, near the incident site and nationally. we heard from the faa that the buffalo niagara falls international airport is now closed to all international arriving and departing flights. this just crossed from the faa. no time when they posted this about when this would expire. we have also heard from transportation secretary pete buttigieg. he's been briefed about this, he says, also spoken with his canadian counterpart about this dynamic situation. we're learning that also at the buffalo airport from the transportation authority which runs it that cars coming into the airport are being screened as well as the passengers who are going through security and so they're trying to get the word out for passengers leaving the airport today on a huge holiday travel day to try and factor in some extra time because of that. the tsa says it's already in a heightened state of security posture because of this and the tsa and the department of homeland security say they are coordinating with local and federal counterparts to try and make sure that this situation as it unfolds, they can change things quickly as needed. they say there are things that have gone into place that you can see, like dogs at the airport, we have also heard of things in some cases that you cannot see. and so there are many things changing here by the moment when it comes to transportation because this was at a border crossing. this did involve transportation and now we are learning that the airports are potentially a factor here as well and that is something coming from the faa in which they say that the international arrivals and departures are being halted at the buffalo airport. pretty significant because it's 20 miles from the blast site and it is significant because it's on the canadian border. presumably, a lot of international flights come in and out there. 2 million passengers a year at the airport. 5,000 flights a month and this is a huge time for thanksgiving travel. they were expecting about 2.7 million people according to the tsa at airports across the country today, boris. >> pete muntean, thank you so much for that update. we want to go to josh campbell now. josh, you're a former fbi special agent. i'm wondering when you hear the news that the buffalo airport has been shut down this way, is it your impression that this is potentially because of some information that the faa has received or simply out of an abundance of caution. >> it's unclear. we obviously know after major incidents, other entities will take note, will see increased patrols, oftentimes at different locations. particularly in an area where you talk about transportation, as pete was just mentioning this incident taking place at a bridge. but i think authorities -- the onus is on them to provide information if they shut down something because there's obviously a concern about public confidence here. as we were discussing earlier, boris, based on this incident itself, and i'll note that there's a lot that we still don't know. there's a lot that investigators are doing behind the scenes, this doesn't fit the typical profile of past terrorist attacks that we've seen. i worked a lot of terrorism cases. you have extremists that, you know -- this is grim, but their goal is to cause as much loss of life as they can. just looking at the incident location here, this wouldn't be a typical place where that would be accomplished. one thing that also really stands out to me here is the idea that you have two individuals that are in the vehicle. we know that extremists, if that's what this was, which i don't see that -- i don't see that being the case right now, they would want to maximum the harm that they could cause and you don't do that by putting two people in the same vehicle. they would presumably want to conduct an attack with different locations. and so all that taken together, you know, really tells me that it's far too soon to make that determination. one thing, obviously, that authorities want to determine is whether there was any type of incendiary device in that vehicle. bomb technicians from the fbi and the atf would be on scene conducting those tests trying to determine if there's any type of match. that would change this dynamic completely. barring that information, it just does not have the typical terrorists of terrorist incidents that we've seen. final point i'll make -- and this is something that beth was mentioning earlier -- it's easy to get tunnel vision on these incidents and you look at what happened, obviously this is concerning, but they'll be looking at the bigger picture. what are the characteristics, who those individuals are, what their past is like, and whether there was any type of medical history in the past as well. all that would be key. because they're deceased, authorities can't interview them. a lot of work to be done to rule out what this was here. >> still very early in this process. josh campbell, thanks so much for the perspective. we're going to take a quick break. but we're covering multiple breaking news stories not the least is which the explosion at the u.s. border crossing with canada at the rainbow bridge near niagara falls. the very latest when we come back. the power goes out and we still have wifi to do our homework. and that's a good thing? great in my book! who are you? no power? no problem. introducing storm-ready wifi. now you can stay reliably connected through power outages with unlimited cellular data and up to 4 hours of battery back-up to keep you online. only from xfinity. home of the xfinity 10g network. we are continuing to track the breaking news out of buffalo -- or near buffalo, new york. the u.s./canada border, the rainbow bridge where a vehicle has exploded and its two inhabitants were killed. we're going to focus now on breaking news from the middle east. major breaking news about the hostages that are being held by hamas and other groups in gaza. israeli prime minister benjamin netanya