jim, we will talk to you again on the other side of the break, we are back in a moment, and when we rejoin you, at the top of the hour, we will continue the coverage of the two big breaking news stories, of course, we will continue our coverage of the malaysia airline flight. brought down apparently now. all signs seem to indicate that it was shot down from the sky. they suggest it was brought down by pro russian separatist. the other big story, of course, is the beginning of a ground offensive by the israeli military, in gaza, way are back in a moment, again that ground offensive is now officially underway. back in a e. mo.

this is al jazeera america, we are following two major stories that are unfolding with new deltas. israel just confirmed it has launch add ground offensive in gaza. it is official now, troops are now actually in gaza, the move comes after ten days of israeli air strikes in gaza and hamas firing rockets into israel. but we begin in ukraine, where 295 people are believed to be dead. here is what we know at this hour, the boeing triple seven was flying from amsterdam to kuala lumpur. it took off after

6:00 a.m. eastern time. here is the night path. and this is a very popular rout by the way. when malaysia airline saying air traffic controllers lost radar contact, near the border with russia, going to show you some video, it is said to show the actual sites. initials say the plane was shot down, vice president biden seemed to confirm that just a short time ago. the aircraft went down in an area controlled by pro russian separatist, malaysia's prime minister says the president told him his government is the rebels will hold talks to establish a corridor to allow access to the crash site. a hot to get to now. i think we have phil live, good to talk to you, what can you tell us?

nobody the willing to start pointing any fingers. which civilians which citizens of their own, pay have been on that plane. they are all pretty much calling for an investigation. but nobody is pointing fingers the closest anybody has come is the nato secretary general, who said that the entire situation, about what they believe happened there, we have heard from the ukrainian intelligence agencies that they have interintercepted telephone communications can they say clearly shows that the separatist were behind a missle attack on that plane. >> all right, let's hear from the security chief.

>> discuss with each other, that they arrived the place where the plane was shot down. that they recognize that the plane is civilian, and that are is a great number of casualties on this plane. on the site. now authorities are saying they are den't maaing an investigation and that the ukrainian authorities have agreed to that, they are inviting a variety of nations and their aviation experts to come and take a look at what happened there. because it is rebel held territory. >> absolutely. phil, for us, thank you.

to this point this' been no finger points but that is changing. the disaster would not have happened for kiev had not renewed military operations let's bring in andre, he is the executive board member with the ukrainian congress committee for member. appreciate your patience, thank you for being with us. we have a real escalation. >> it has been escalating for a while. >> this takes it to a new level. >> this comes off the cease fire, the cease fire that president putin was referring to, there was a cease fire seven days at the end of june, international leaders reached out the the ukrainian president and said give it another shot. digger that time we saw them crossing the border,

different arments coming across the area. one of those early reports about one of those bok missile systems. that happened during the cease fire. a book system was captured from the ukrainian defense post, and that was reported by russian television. >> at this point, when we talk about commercial airline. in this conflict zone, we are a global village. not everyone has an interest, it seems to me, in this conflict. this just takes this to a whole new level, doesn't it? just yesterday. >> and then on the ceils of that we get an event like this. where does this go? what territory are we

entering? we have a rogue state. the united nations con determined. voted to condemn the nation, what has been happening in eastern ukraine, and it is a very small segment, it is about a third of one state, and a third of another. compares to all of ukraine, it's a very small segment that is having this. but it is a very large territory to defend in general. as you are saying it is a global thing now. ives heart broken by the pictures of normal citizens coming to the dutch embassy. and a hot of the passengers were dutch, here in new york city, the commute has called to have a service tonight, and we will have a meeting at the united nations, everybody is in morning right now. but verification have been in a period of morning every day. i watched yet about 3:00,

is when it is midnight in ukraine, and i counted how many soldiers passed away yesterday, every day there have been deaths and the sickening thing about this, is that we had an early warning just this week. we had a ukrainian passport plane shot down, we know that's not a rocket propelled grenade. where the u.s. sames were announced late, and no european sanctions came. >> because they are so concerned about russia and so concerned about oil, and gas, and all those -- we get those economic reasons. i could take think this takes matters to to a whole new matter.

maybe am sot point next week, but at some point you would think that reluctant european states would have to take a new look. when you hear saying the disaster doesn't happen. that seems -- that's a lame attempt to defect from his own responsibility. the terrorist happening he frankly declared it a terrorist attack. other nations come in and investigate, we are going to cover this up, but we are certainly not going to do what rush what is proposing. marry systems are the ones responsibility, and they are saying they should be responsibility, they will determine what happened here, and report to the world.

we will give you every bit of help that we can give you and certainly the president will offer the president and the ukraine yeah the opportunity for the ntsb to come to the ground. question can't see that happening. >> that valuable time is being lost, that the black boxes may be gone as well. this totally compromises any chance at a viable investigation. we zillion have people missing from the ukraine from november. we have independent or foreign nations lending their services to help

out, guarden what is happening with crimea, make sure they don't get in the mine fields and now we have this. so all this support has been building to the fact that you can't just send a couple of supportive investigators to help out here and there, you have to stop the problem at it's root. we are talking about a rogue actor who had been sending in irregular troops. >> do you know what he is wants? do you have an idea? you have talked about it more than i have. do you have any idea finched any conclusions as to what it is vladimir putin wants in. >> what does he have, all the money in the world. estimations if he is not the richest person in the world among them. he has all the -- >> i don't want to set a lot of time. >> he has all the physical possessions h ecan have, he has all the power within his own nation, so an over sixty-year-old man that wants that, it's

narcissism, and some kind of -- you have to start thinking of him in the sense of a king i don't think inn, what is he going to do next. >> great to talk to you. >> thank you. stick around, let's get back to jim walsh, u.p.s. pros we would get to jim again, a little late getting to you jim, but appreciate you staying with us. >> absolutely. >> your thoughts now on the evidence that seems to be coming together? and the idea that it looks as though according to the vice president, that this plane was shot down. >> yeah. so -- part of it is just circumstantial. the plane breaks up in midair, it breaks up in

midair, so how does that happen. >> it happens over a conflict zone, in which a transport plane was shot down at 20,000 feet, five days earlier. so that seems to be pretty leading, you were talking to david chuter, we will have a variety of evidence here. there will be satellite, there will be signals intelligence. what you heard from the ukrainian personals. we will let nato and the u.s. weigh in on this, again, heavily watched one of the most heavily watched spots in the world, they saw there's evidence they may have. a variety of different pieces of evidence. e'm worried aability the integrity of this crash site. i'm pretty sure the russians are driving there as fast as they can. >> yeah. >> but it is such a big

area, maybe they will be enough -- >> let me ask you what i want to get here with you. so in terms of whether we are right now, in the escalation, of this whole crisis, in the early days of what is happening in kiev, and then what we saw in crimea, and some other areas and eastern ukraine to the place where you have russia clearly supporting these separatists right. to and now we are at a place, where one of these missle systems advance missle systems. is alleged to have been used by these pro russian separatists to shoot down a commercial airline all by it it seems by mistake. i am so happy you put it that way, because there's a context here. if you are an american, and you may think well, this thing was under

control, it was winding down, there was an off ramp, and then someone in the last two weeks it escalated more. i think it caught a lot of folks off guard. in was getting worse by the day, now this may be one of those crisis moments where putin is forced to step back. without a big vision about where this is going to end. it played domestically, and he can talk about reasserting interests in the region. but then he didn't anticipate this would happen. i want you to talk about the geopolitics, we have had a number of estates in the e.u. in europe that have been hesitant

to move forward. do those nations that have been hesitant, sure, we have new sanctions yesterday, do -- does this change the game? does this significantly change the diem thattic. that these nations that have been a little hesitant, now really get off the sidelines and come forward with statements and maybe tougher sanctions i know they have a lot of the line. >> yeah, i would break that up, the way you put it is perfect. it doesn't change the geo, but it changes the political. it doesn't change the fundamental energy situation. it does change the politics there's going to be a news story, television coverage.

that were essentially murdered probably by mistake. >> and jim and every one of those stories. there will be the linkage allegedly killed by pro-russian separatists. that will be the link, allegedly. >> right. >> until we get all the facts in. do you want to add anything to that? >> who have saided them across the border. >> i appreciate it, jim walsh for us, always great to talk to you, i want to get to alley, because i think we have a perfect moment to segway here. you lad a conversation with a terrific financial reporter, all world smart. >> right.

absolutely, used to be the managing editor for financial times. she has now gone back to canada. the front of this story, she has been in the region. verification reflect as lot of what jim just said, the ukrainians were gaining ground in this region. over the last few weeks which is why the russians upped their support. she thinks that putin will look at this and say wait a second, we gave these guys that are running our battle too much room. they did get us into -- if it does turn out to be the case. this is a very complicated area where lines of command are not clear, and we need to be careful to find out what

did happen. i think maybe we should pause and say what a tragedy. for the poor families involved a very likely scenario is that this was a truly tragic accident. and that there was an effort to target a military plane, or what somebody thought was a military plane, and instead commercial passenger jet got hit. i think it is a real wake up call for all of us, that we live in such a connected such a global world, and our technology is so powerful, that really no man is an island. i think some of us have had the sense and maybe even in some quarters the hope, that you can say oh, this isn't our business. let that little flight go on, we don't have the money, the energy to get involved. i think this is a wake up call for us, when you have these pockets of instability, and when they become military, it becomes dangerous for a lot of people. foreign policy is not a

luxury, it is not a hoppy, it is not something we can do when everything is great at home, and solved our own problems. foreign policy and being engaged in making the world a safester place as we can make it, is the price we pay to live in a global world. if we want to take flights between countries if we want to travel and be part of the global economy, then all of us have to support and endeed require that our government be part of an international community. the same is, a reason above all that we needed to be concerned about ukraine and russia, from the moment russia invaded is that was the first time since the second world war that european bordered were violated. that the integrity was breeched and you can say oh, you know what, what

an obscure abstract, well we are seeing that create as grave danger. look, our borders are not perfectly drawn, neighbor we have disputes but international borders will going forward from this day be -- russia was allowed to get away with breeching that in crimea, and it is important the ever the whole world to say to russia, this is it. stop spreading separatist. i am confident to say when russia does that, you will see the government absolutely capable of re-establishing control on it's territory. really good food for thought. airplanes, people are concerned. everybody flies them, as far as we know this has nothing to do with the aircraft, it is a safe aircraft. >> tell us what we are getting in terms of the

evidence, piecing together. >> right, but the airline are now saying that they are all avoiding the area. people have been asking it is the most fuel economical. >> efficient. >> so airline think twice about this, because if they have to burn more fuel, it costs you money, this evacuated to reschedule, now everybody has says they are not flying over ukraine, unless the flight is going to ukraine. isn't there some question out there? strands of information here and there about the air space. >> the two issues is that -- first of all, around crimea which is far south and west, but there was some restriction on the air space, the ukrainians had put that in place, but it was below a certain

level. these missiles can go up to 37,000, so once there are missles flying around, you are not safe, so this is -- look, we will look into this a lot later on about what do airline know about where they shouldn't be going, who may have these booked missles in because they are all over the place, they are russian made, but everybody uses them. so airline have to think about this? >> and you mentioned -- just give office preview now. >> yeah. >> also be talking to a pilot who says it would have been his choice not to go anywhere the in the neighborhood, but pilots don't make these decisions. and the other thing when this started happening this morning you saw markets go down, because they are worried about a global tension, and then the israeli ground offensive into gaza began.

if you are frying to fly in africa, and the middle east, and avoided conflict zones. >> until now, these zones were little things. people shooting at each other across the board e, now they have missles that can take planes down. >> the hands of rebels. >> definitely, appreciate it so much. >> you are going to do an entire hour in and around this subject? >> appreciate it. lisa, we were talking about air space closed and f actiona warnings, i know this was a warning earlier about this region from the f actiona. well the f.a.a. has decided not to issue a new order as of yet. it was for the crimea region, telling carriers not to nigh over that region.

again, that's not the way where this went down. that's the system that controls the flights all over europe, they are now said that no planes will be routed through there. two ukrainians have closed all of that air space. not up just to a certain level, but closed entirely. so they are calling in their emergency team, in europe, to help rerout the euro control. so there other be planes over this area. after this tragedy, again, a plane that may have been brought down by this other aircraft, other carriers obviously going to avoided this area. and that is happening immediately. >> i want to get to another issue.

who mentioned he had assurances they would work with the rebel groups in this area. what do we know about what is going on on the ground now. this is going to be an interesting call. this will be interesting to see how this unfolds. this area is controlled but ukraine, and they are the ones that should be the lead investigators. and in rebel happeneds they are making all these statements. indicating that it is in charge, as far as president obama has told that the malaysian prime minister there will be a thorough investigation. >> the president biden that the u.s. can come in and help. they told the malaysians

they can come in and help, but the question can all those people get into that area. the rebels have to allow it. so there will be negotiations that take place. everyone on the arena, from nato to others to the u.n., all calling for a full independent investigation. i find it marred to believe that will be stopped. the question is when, how quickly, and how must have access people will have. >> lisa as always. we are going to take a quick break and continue our coverage, we have two developing stories right now, israel aunderstand noing it has started it's ground offensive in gaza, the hatest on that developing story, and also the latest information we can pull together. we are pulling information from a various number of sources here. as we try to get you the latest on flight 17. apparently shot down. according to the vice president with a lot of cav yets.

allegedly shot down, in eastern ukraine, back in a moment. dark now. people have passed away as a result of the crash, charred skeletal remains close to the site and other people that have been slung further away from the site, as well.

. >> we are also following breaking from gaza where it is mid night. israel has launched an offensive inside gaza. and hamas firing rockets into israel. israeli troops haveov