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Length: 4:07
WOLF BLITZER: To our
viewers: you’re in The Situation Room, where new
pictures and information are arriving all the time.
Standing by: CNN reporters across the United States
and around the world to bring you tonight’s top
stories.
Brent Sadler is standing by in Nakoura, Lebanon.
Also, Michael Ware is in Beirut, but let’s go to
Northern Israeli first. John Roberts is watching the
situation from very close to the Lebanese border.
John?
Let's go to Beirut. We'll come back to Brent in a
moment. Michael Ware is our reporter in Beirut,
watching all of this unfold. It looks, at least to
those of us who are watching this from afar, Michael,
that the Israeli military -- thousands of troops
either are or will shortly be moving into south
Lebanon.
The air war about to resume full speed ahead as far
as Israel is concerned. And at the same time, Israeli
troops moving all the way north to Baalbeck not far
from the Syrian border in some sort of operation that
is unfolding right now. Give our viewers a sense,
what are you hearing about what is happening first of
all in Baalbeck?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, this is
a fascinating development that is happening this
evening in Baalbeck. This is a new form of operation
that we haven't so far seen in the campaign by the
Israeli military. This very much is a deep strike
kind of operation. Most likely working on actionable
intelligence. Perhaps they have some very specific
information and are moving on a target, be it to
interrupt a command and control center, to hit a
particular arsenal or perhaps after a high profile
target, a high value target. What we're hearing now
is Lebanese military sources are confirming that
Israeli troops entered a hospital in northern
Baalbeck where they went inside and checked the
identity cards and papers of all the hospital staff
and all of the patients.
Now what we're hearing is that military sources again
say the fighting continues, but on local media and on
Arab channels, what the news is, is that the
Hezbollah forces are claiming to have this group of
Israeli soldiers or commandos as they're being
described surrounded, certainly engaged in heavy
combat -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Michael, stand by for a moment. I think we
have re- established our contact on the phone with
Brent Sadler. He's in Naqoura.
BLITZER: All right, Brent, I'm going to interrupt for
a moment, Brent, because your line is coming in and
out. Stand by for a moment, Brent. We're going to fix
that connection that you have. Michael Ware -- let's
go back to Michael in Beirut. Earlier in the day the
Israelis said that over these nearly three weeks, the
Hezbollah were firing about 100 or 150 rockets a day,
Katyushas mostly into northern Israel. Yesterday it
went down to only three or four and today it's less
than a dozen at least so far. What if anything should
we read into this?
WARE: Well, this is very difficult to get a fix on as
you can well imagine, Wolf. This could be one of any
number of things. First, the most obvious is that
there's been some degrading of Hezbollah's capability
to launch extended operations to strike within
Israel, either their arsenals have been hit or their
supplies, their chains have been hit or simply that
they're incapable of establishing the launch sites.
The other thing is perhaps a political play in that
during this 48-hour cessation of air strikes by the
Israelis within southern Lebanon, perhaps Hezbollah
was calculating that to play to their constituency
they had to be seen not to be going on the offensive
either to give a clear run for whatever evacuations
could take place or for whatever aid to arrive. So it
could be any manner of things at this stage -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Michael Ware in Beirut, Brent Sadler in
Naqoura in southern Lebanon. We're going to get back
to both of you. Lots of news unfolding.