hello. i m brianna keilar with boris sanchez, wolf blitzer is in tel aviv and we re tracking multiple developments in israel s war in hamas. rescue efforts under way following an israeli air strike, a strir strike the idf say was ordered to take out a hamas leader. reports are still coming in, dozens confirmed dead, many more injured. those numbers are expected to rise. officials in hamas controlled gaza say 0 h20 homes were destrd there. just moments ago, i spoke with an idf spokesperson who confirmed that israel was involved in the blast. listen to this. we ll be coming out in the next hour hopefully with more data. i can give you there was a senior hamas commander in that area. sadly he was hiding, again as they do, behind innocent civilians. that s all i can say. we ll be coming out with more and what happened there. can you confirm it was an israeli attack that destroyed a big chunk of the jabalia refugee camp? yes, i can. we were focused again on a target, a s
win sentiment, largely because the iron dome intercept to what, 95 or 99% of the drones and missiles that were there, i would know that iran did provide some warning& that made some question whether it was purely a performative act. they were engaged in or one that was intended to warn a different capacity. i want to bring in cnn white house correspondent priscilla alvarez. priscilla has there been any reaction from the white house tonight? laura, the white house has been largely quiet tonight, but you can imagine that they are assessing this as well, looking at all of this footage in real time and also their intelligence. of course, this has been top of mind for the white house and for president biden, who does not want to see this conflict grow any wider in the region, then when he had a phone call with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu over the weekend following that attack by iran, he said that he should think carefully and strategically about next steps and also noted
old antiquated, or they ve since been upgraded in some ways using iranian capabilities and other capabilities but they probably pose a very limited threat to the israelis the only thing to keep in mind, laura, is that when it comes to the nuclear facilities in and around s5 on the one that s really important is the natano nuclear facility. and that is 120 kilometers or about 70 miles away from his behind. so if you strike the area around is fine. you are not going to be striking the city of isfahan. that is, you re not going to be striking not tons. and what you are telling them. as we ve talked about how do we you are telling everybody that you could reach this area and you can in fact eliminate that threat, or at least attack that threat. if you need, need to do so. carnal leighton, just singly compared to the signal that he ran sand by being able to reach israel issued a warning beforehand. and the iron dome
result? knowing that both nations now? have been able to reach the others actual territory but there s a distinction here. the iron dome was able to intercept at least 99%. this has now reached iran, although we don t yet know the damage well, first of all, there was no allies on the side of iran, or at protecting them as was in the side of israel, was part of that miraculous solution, frankly, i mean, two the shoot nine, 9% of those rockets, 300 rockets coming towards your country is nothing short of a miracle. it was a tremendous military accomplishment. what iran does not have the same air defense capabilities and they likely were on high alert. they would they would probably give it their best shot, but they just don t have the same capability. so where this is escalating now is iran gets, gets violated. the israelis hit actually their targets like with the why behind the target s still remains, was it to get close to nuclear facilities? was it to destroy
was able, able to intercept the missiles, the drones that was suggesting why some were suggesting two prime minister benjamin and yahoo to quote unquote, take the win. what does it say that iran could not defend against this attack? well, for one thing, iran does not have anything similar to the iron dome. so it s clear defenses are fairly antiquated in comparison to the israeli earned offenses. they re not an effective, but they are not as effective as the israeli air defense system, which is a highly sophisticated, one of the best it s in the world. so that is really why you see this difference. and of course, we will have to wait for the battle damage assessments to come out and to get some idea of exactly what was here too, and how effective the israeli strikes work. but it seems like they were able to do this pretty much with impunity. and it tells us that there are basically holes in the iranian air defense system. and that the israelis can take advantage of them if they feel t