recall. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer in tel aviv, israel, and you re in the israel, and you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com announcer: this is cnn breaking news. right now, we re keeping a very close eye in the skies over gaza after the truly extraordinary images of war we saw here on cnn just a little while ago with flares raining down for some 30 minutes as israel appeared to unleash an intense new assault in its battle against hamas. our correspondents are standing by here in the middle east as well as in the united states. first, i want to go to cnn s nic robertson. he had a direct view of the bombardment of gaza as it was under way from his position in israel not far from gaza. nic, tell our viewers more about what you saw and what s happening there now. reporter: yeah, wolf, we just had a very heavy detonation coming from the direction of where all those flares were dropping a