Hostage were evacuated alive but they died of their wounds en route to a u. S. Navy ship. Defense secretary chuck hagel in afghanistan today addressed the rescue missions difficulties. This mission, which there will be more detail forthcoming, was extremely wellexecuted. It was a very dangerous and complicated mission. But like always in these efforts, there is risk. Somers, a photojournalist, was abducted in yemens capital back in 2013. South african teacher who was also killed was seized in may of 2013. Nbcs Kristen Welker is at the white house for us with the very latest on this. What are you hearing from there at 1600 pennsylvania . Reporter alex, ive been talking to Senior Administration officials and they tell me once that video of luke somers was released on thursday in which aqap terrorists threatened to kill him, officials determined based on that and other intelligence, that he would be killed on saturday. So that set off a chain of highlevel meetings at the department of defense, at the white house. Then on friday, defense secretary chuck hagel signed off on a plan to rescue somers and any other hostages who were with him, based on incredible intelligence of his whereabouts. On friday, president obama also signed off on the rescue attempt and the operation took place late afternoon, early evening, friday, east coast time, im told. The hostages were being held in a compound in a remote area that is called schwabwa governant in yemen. A firefight ensued. Its believed at that point, one individual ran back into the compound where the hostages were being held and attempted to execute them. They didnt die at the scene but after they had been evacuated as they were en route to being evacuated. Senior Administration Officials wont confirm how they were killed specifically. But they also dont wave me off of reports that they were shot. Senior Administration Officials say they dont believe that any civilians were killed at this point in time. These details are just coming in. So theyre still assessing the situation. They think several terrorists were killed in this rescue attempt. And they underscore that the president felt it was the right decision to try to rescue somers because again the administration said it has credible intelligence to suggest that he would have been executed today. They call it a whole of government approach and say that right now everyone here is just grieving and is heartbroken. Ill read you more of what we heard from president obama who released a statement earlier today. He said, quote, earlier this week, a video released by his terrorist captors announced that luke would be killed within 72 hours. Other information also indicated that lukes life was in imminent danger. Based on this assessment and as soon as there was reliable intelligence and an operational plan, i authorized a rescue attempt yesterday. I also authorized the rescue of any other hostages held in the same location as luke. Now, im told they didnt know the identity of the other hostages at the time. But today they are confirming that it was that South African teacher that you just mentioned, alex. So a lot of disappointment and grief here at the white house that they werent able to rescue luke somers. Terrible day. Thank you very much, Kristen Welker. I appreciate that. Lets get military insight and perspective from general barry mccaffrey. General, i welcome you. Is there any way at this point to know what went wrong . No. I think what happened kristen covered it quite adequately. They felt their hands were forced. So to some extent, they had to put this Mission Together on the fly. They probably lost the element of surprise since the al qaeda operatives knew they would try something. Its a tragedy. Fortunately there was adequate intelligence to at least try and locate this american. Hes from out here in the seattle area, and to go in and try to rescue him alive. Too bad. Yeah. General, this was the second attempt to rescue him. We had a special forces operation that happened around thanksgiving. They did not find him at the location. So how unusual is it that you have something two operations like this so quickly back to back . Its very unusual. I think the second one once they got this videotape where they essentially believed he was on the verge of being brutally murdered anyway, it forced their hand and they went right back in. As you point out, alex, these operations are extremely dangerous. Its astonishing to me. Ive watched jasock in iran and other places, they are sheer magic. No one else on the face of the earth that could even attempt this kind of thing. But as you indicate, youre going into an armed compound of trying to get helpless people from the midst of al qaeda operatives. Tough mission. Too bad both these hostages lost their lives. Fortunately apparently they nailed a bunch of the al qaeda people in the process. Yeah. General, im sure you will concur with Richard Engels reporting earlier in which he said the likelihood of success in these operations is very, very slim because of all the factors that go into it. But with regard to the planning and the intelligence, can you just give us an idea how difficult that is, when youre not 100 certain of what youre going to encounter . Well, i think thats it. We can obviously take pictures of things from above. We have human operatives, particularly through the Yemeni Government on the ground. They try and monitor communications as effectively as they can. But when it comes to the tactical scene of, what do the rooms look like, where are the doors, are the hostages tied up, none of that could be possibly known. By the way, a lot of these operations do succeed. If you get the element of surprise, if you know hostages are on an aircraft or in a hotel and youre able to study it and rehearse it, then they have a very high likelihood of succeeding. So, again, i dont think the government had an option. I think president obama did the right thing. He went in and tried to save this poor fellows life. General, thank you very much for giving us the details as we know them. I mentioned richard. A bit later on, Richard Engel will reflect on his own hostage ordeal. Hell talk about whether a rescue attempt is always worth the risk. Thats coming your way at the bottom of the hour. Other breaking news to share right now, a short time ago, an extremely large typhoon made its first landfall in the philippines. The wind gusts of the typhoon are estimated to be about 130 miles an hour right now. More than 650,000 evacuated their homes headed to shelters. Jim maceda is tracking the typhoon for us and joins us by phone. Jim, what are the conditions like where you are . Reporter well, conditions arent so bad for us here, alex, because were due north in a separate in a different province. Thats the good news. The bad news is we are in the province that is going to take the brunt of the storm tomorrow. It is on that path between samar and where it landfalled a few hours ago and manila where its going to probably end up or close to manila by sunday. You mentioned up to 130mileanhour winds, that wasnt as strong as a super typhoon strength but it certainly was Strong Enough to create a hell of a lot of havoc and damage. Whats interesting is where we are here, people are not fleeing. Theyre staying inside their homes. They say theyre protecting their properties. They say they managed to escape the wrath of haiyan last year and hope the same thing will happen. So a lot of us journalists who are here are quite concerned that whats going to happen tomorrow when this town of legazpi is in fact confronted by a very, very powerful storm. In terms of the difference between last year and this year, seems to me the most important difference is how much more the government has been preparing itself for this attack, for this event. The government has the Philippine Government has spent billions of pesos since last years haiyan disaster on various programs, providing for sturdier shelter, at least putting roofs over families heads and not just tents, prepositioning of food and supplies for easy access and perhaps most of all, the Philippine Military on high alert to take over the relief and rescue operations if necessary. Youll recall that last year in haiyan, you couldnt find a philippine soldier for three or four days after that. So its been an education process. And people are just, generally speaking, more prepared than they were a year ago. Dont want to see anything close to the 7,300 killed or missing since that horrible super typhoon of last year. Jim maceda, many thanks. Lets go to another developing story were following, the massive protests around a new york grand jurys decision not to indict a white Police Officer in the death of eric garner. New protests are expected today in the form of a diein in new york. Protesters went to the macys and this is their message its wrong. This is a flawed system within the Justice System. We need to change it. With our voices being heard and us being united, we believe we can make a difference and letting these people know that this has to stop, it has to stop today, no more police brutality. 20 people were arrested. Similar protests erupted in other parts of the country as well where protesters protested the death of eric garner, tamir rice and michael brown. Other news to report, the Pakistani Military says a top al qaeda leader was killed this morning in a raid in south waziristan. Adnan El Shukrijumah was killed. A 44yearold man is in Police Custody today after police say he went on a stabbing spree while on an amtrak train. Passengers say the man stabbed four people including the conductor on friday night near niles, michigan. I was like, oh, my god, hes punching the guy. I noticed there was something in his fist resembling a knife blade or something. I saw him bring it back down. He stopped stabbing the guy in front and he lurched forwards towards these to other women sitting probably two rows back from the conductor. One person ri mains in serious condition. Federal authorities are investigating whether this killing was a hate crime. Investigators say the suspect ran down a 15yearold muslim boy outside of a Somali Community center on thursday evening. Witnesses say he was caring a machete as he ran from his vehicle after the collision. Community leaders say the driver threatened the teens family and other area somali muslims for months, even writing, the koran is worse than ebola, on his truck. Lets go to weather now and the rain hitting both coasts today. San jose has some misting rain a bit earlier in the week, Northern California saw about 3 inches, all pretty badly needed. Here in new york, the wet weather is hitting tourists in the big apple, all of us alike, just look at all the umbrellas in times square. Paul goodloe has more. Theres going to be a much bigger storm heading towards california as we head towards wednesday, thursday, friday and this time next week. Definitely watch that. Flooding will be an issue with that next big storm. The current storm continues to press eastward across the southeast. A lot of Football Games going on. Acc championship in charlotte, rain will be a factor. Well have snow in the midatlantic. Good news for some of the ski resorts. As we head towards tomorrow, the rain, gone from the eastern seaboard. Definitely a great day to get out there and enjoy the tree or anything outside in terms of shopping. Temperatures colder all across the eastern seaboard. The rest of the nation starting to quiet down. Dry weather in the midwest. But were also watching the potential for another winter storm maker in the east coast develop across the upper midwest. A wintry mess as this clipper system comes across the western great lakes. Eventually this system will energize a bigger storm for the east as we head towards monday night into tuesday and wednesday. Talking about rain and snow as well. Snow into the higher terrain in the interior. Rain across the i95 corridor. Outside of that, we look for and enjoy a nice, quiet weekend across much of the nation to end the weekend on sunday. Alex . We havent had any rainy, damped spirits here, lots of tourists outside looking at the tree. Thank you so much, paul. Threeterm louisiana senator Mary Landrieu fighting to keep her seat today. What are the chances she will hang on in the beat red south . Well take a look next. Ring ring . Progresso you soup people have my kids loving vegetables. Well vegetables. Shh taste better in our savory broth. Vegetables . No. Soup oh soup loaded with vegetables. Packed with taste. I wish. Please, please, please, please, please. [ male announcer ] the wish we wish above all. Is health. So we quit selling cigarettes in our cvs pharmacies. Expanded minuteclinic, for walkin medical care. And created programs that encourage people to take their medications regularly. Introducing cvs health. A new purpose. A new promise. To help all those wishes come true. Cvs health. Because health is everything. Cvs health. Introducing. A pm pain reliever that dares to work all the way until. The am. New aleve pm the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour strength of aleve. I am an electric crew foreman out of the cupertino service center. I was born and raised in the cupertino area. Its a fantastic area to work. The new technology that we are installing out in the field is important for the customers because system reliability i believe is number one. Pg e is always trying to plan for the future and we are always trying to build something stronger and bigger and more reliable. I love living here and i love the community i serve. Nobody wants to be without power. I dont want my family to be without power. Its much more personal to me for that reason. I dont think theres any place i really would rather be. Giving you a somewhat dreary look at the capitol dome there which is under renovation there in washington, d. C. But we know its going to be beautiful as soon as its all done. Meantime, in louisiana, the polls are open in the Senate Runoff between democratic senator Mary Landrieu and republican congressman bill cassidy. Landrieu is in a fight for her life, hoping to pull out another win. Kasey hunt is joining me now. Kasey, with a good day to you, everybodys saying its a foregone conclusion that senator landrieu is going to lose. Is that the case . You never want to make foregone conclusions until the voters have their say. But i think wed all be surprised to see senator landrieu pull this out. This has been a situation where essentially everyones abandoned her. As soon as she lost in that jungle primary, thats what louisiana had. On election day in november, it was her and two other candidates. And she ended up in the runoff with bill cassidy, whos a congressman. National democrats pulled their ads down off the air immediately. They havent gone back in for her. Shes been fighting sort of tooth and nail from capitol hill to try to do what she can to help herself. She pushed for a vote on the keystone pipeline. She got the vote but she didnt get enough to pass it through the senate. Ever since then, its been a slow march towards whats looking like the end of her political career in the senate. Isnt that going to leave the south without a democratic senator . You have florida, bill nelson, one. But florida doesnt really count when you look at the deep south. You have florida and also virginia but as you point out, thats not really the historic deep south. Those states have a demographic makeup and changes that make them different from the rest where democrats in the south were really the dominant Political Party for decades in the wake of reconstruction, everything that went on in the civil war it goes back as far as the civil war. So it really is a pretty remarkab remarkable point that she is still standing. Landrieu has really done everything she possibly could to hang on as a southern democrat. She really focused on her state, always pushing through legislation and being very careful to tell the public about what she was doing for the state. She had very strong ties to the business community. She pushed for Energy Legislation at the expense of environmentalists or more liberal democrats in her party. But at the end of the day, it just doesnt look like its going to be enough. Were going to let the Voters Decide certainly. Well say, though, that polling suggests shes down by 20 points. Polling suggests she is in for it. Good to see you, thank you. Demands for change, more protests expected in cities across this country for the fourth day following a new york grand jurys decision not to indict a Police Officer involved in the death of eric garner. Activists issued demands at a protest in new york yesterday. Deadly force has been used too much. Theres never a special prosecutor in the case of police killings. We want to push for a special prosecutor. Joining me now, Dorian Warren and eugene odonnell. Previously served in the nypd and was also a prosecutor in the brooklyn and queens districts. We want to say that eugene was a member of the new york city mayor de blasios Public Safety transition team. Welcome to you both. Dorian, ill start with you first. Protests have been massive in scale. But how big of an impact are they going to have . I think it remains to be seen. One interesting thing about the protest this is week in new york city and chicago and other places is if you look at the difference in the Police Response, especially here in new york city to the Police Response in ferguson and the st. Louis area, this is actually showing you that there are multiple ways to do policing, that theres a way to Police Protesters that allows them to express themselves, to express their anger, their frustration, the demands, without being overmilitarized, without cracking down in a way that is brutal and stifles protests. It remains to b