so what history has shown is often times when this happened, there is deny, deny, deny when a country is accused of shooting down a commercial flight. it seems when they are faced with irrefutable evidence, the country admits to fault. >> jason carroll, thank you very much. the united states not immune there, either. breaking news continues with breaking news continues with anderson cooper. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com >> good evening and thanks for joining us. a busy and grim night. the shootdown of a passenger jet over's earn ukraine. the question who is responsible? how did it happen? and the ground defensive in gaza underway. we begin with the downing of malaysia airlines flight 17, who did it? who is responsible for the loss of 300 lives on board an airliner. the plane at 33,000 feet one moment and pieces on the ground

the next, that is the scene. wreckage of the boeing 777 fr, remains of 298 men, women, children. three of them we now know infants. in all, 283 passengers 15r crew members, 154 touch, 27 australians, 23 maylationelatio indian, who tracked the plane? who aimed the missile? who launched it and on whose behalf? the fact that it happened in the heat of a civil war fostered by russia's vladimir putin adding another dimension potentially making it a game changer. president obama spoke today with president putin and ukraine's prime minister, as examine the

the live coverage tonight and look at what intelligence community knows about what happened and hear from people who lost loved ones in what we began as another routine flight. flight 17 departed amsterdam at 12:15 local time. 298 people on board. 283 of them passengers, the rest crew members. the flight's path took the jet over central and eastern europe before continuing on into asia but at 2:15 ukraine's air traffic control lost contact while cruising. >> a malaysia airlines flight crashed. >> it was 30 miles from the russian boarder, an area lived with fighting between ukrainian military forces and prorussian acce separatists. debris scattered for miles,

personal belongings still in tact on the ground. a reporter at the site described the horror. >> it's a gruesome scene. there is bodies out through fields. people said the plane kind of exploded in the air, and everything rained down in bits and pieces. the plane itself, people inside. >> president obama was notified on the phone by russian president vladimir putin as initial reports began surfacing and pledged support in any way possible. >> i directed my national security team to stay in close contact with the ukrainian government, the united states will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why. >> a u.s. official later confirming to cnn that the plane was brought down by a surface to air missile, but exactly who fired that missile is still unknown. ukraine's prime minister quickly laid the blame squarely on separatists. we do not call it an incident

oro or catastrophe, in april there was an on going conflict but no such bans exited for flights on this part of eastern ukraine. certainly not at a altitude. before the flight began an image and message. a picture of the plane at the gate purportly taken by a passenger about to board. he posted online with a reference to the still missing flight 370. translated it reads, in case it disappears, this is what it looks like. as always, we have experts on every angel tonight. jim sh jim schutto, safety analysts david, author of "why planes crash." jim, let's start with you on the security angle. u.s. intelligence saying this was a missile strike. how is it they know that? >> two pieces of evidence, one u.s. assets in the region

detected what appeared to be a missile system, radar locking on to this plane before it disappeared and two, other u.s. assets detected the heat signature, which would indicate a missile rising from the ground into the air and then striking this jetliner. so those two things lead them to believe it was a missile strike but as you say, they have not determined who is behind the missile strike. >> phil, at this point in terms of what the intelligence community is trying to do, not just u.s. intelligence, of usually intelligence agencies from around the region trying to draw a picture from all the data points. can you kind of paint us a picture of how that works? >> sure, we have been looking throughout the day at one sliver of intelligence, that is things like the thermal footprint, whether something fired was picked up on intelligence systems or radar that picked up a launch. there is a bunch of other silvers. communication between commanders but in my experience after this,

especially if this was an accident, people start to talk. u.s. intelligence collectors, people like the national security agency, nsa will pick up rebels if they did this talking about what happened. i suspect intelligence is still rolling in. one more piece and that's human intelligence, do we have sources within the ukrainian opposition who have access to commanders who can talk about this. my one guess 6:00 a.m. tomorrow on the president's desk will be a piece of paper that offers a fairly clear picture of what happens, whether or not the white house is telling us yet. >> we have already heard ukrainian officials claim they intercepted phone conversations that indicated conversations between separatists and even russians. do you think it will take a long time to figure out where the missile was launched from and who is responsible, who pressed the button and gave the order? is it possible to find out the

launch trajectory? >> they will have a pretty clear picture not only from technical sources, things like whether they saw the launch trajectory but human sources talking about this. the president will have decisions to make tomorrow. one more thing, anderson, we haven't talked much about. when you look at intelligence, there are few countries who have the tremendous capability to do things like follow missiles. one is russia. if i were in the cia now and spent 25 years there, i would say this is our assessment of the technical capabilities the russians have in this military area and the knowledge putin has about what happened here and i'll close with what i think the conclusion will be. president putin has to know at this hour what happened because they had russian intep telligen services collect evidence.

>> if this was not in a contested area, the investigation would begin in terms of a international group or local country, ukraine in this instance but ukraine officials don't have access to this site. it's held by separatists. that's a hole in the layer. >> a very worrying layer. you not only -- at all sorts of levels, public health level because unfortunately there are now humane remains that are there. at an investigating level because you want to get the records so you can start to look and see what were the implosions like -- >> not just black boxes but data recorders and wreckage. >> you can tell a huge amount and then you want black boxes, flight data recorder because you can see what failed and sequence and the cockpit voice recorder to hear what was said in the cockpit and what other noises happened at that moment. the mere fact this is not a

secure sterile site at the moment is of concern and that's why the rebels offer top have a seize fire so that they can go in and see it. it will be something that has to be looked at and taken care of. >> rebels and insurgent said they want international investigators. >> so you're looking at an environment where it would be an american country, whichever one that would do the investigation. >> certainly not russian authorities or ukrainian authorities and for family members on board, that is not something they want. david, you've been involved in a lot of crash investigations. when we spoke earlier, you raised a point which is don't jump to any conclusions this was being shot down by a rocket, missile, and in fact, you pointed to the video of what we believe is the actual crash where you don't see a trail of smoke as the plane is plummeting toward earth and that made you question whether or not the plane in fact had been shot down. now we're hearing from u.s.

authorities saying in fact, that was the case, it was shot down. what do you think it counts for the lack of a smoke trail here? >> there is a couple things that could have happened, depending where the missile exploded at but we've done research since i spoke this morning about it if the fuel vapors are not vapor s vaporous, the actual vapors of the fuel itself are not -- are exposed and out before the blame starts and the fuel without being vaporized will stop the flame from occurring. it extinguishing itself because jet fuel when in liquid form is not flammable. fumes are flammable. that would explain it. the point i think this morning was more important to me was as you said earlier, not to jump to conclusions. at this point i would offer not to jump to conclusions who fired that missile certainly, and that's the next step. >> in terms of the weaponry involved here and david susie

just alerted to it, we think of a missile striking an aircraft. my understanding on the system, this russian system, the one possibly involved here, it's actually not a factor of the missile itself, the war head hitting the plane but detonating prior to hitting the plane and the plane is actually struck by a whole variety of things inside that war head. is that your understanding? >> yeah, i think that's correct. >> yes, yes, it is. >> one of the -- go ahead. >> i'm sorry. >> go ahead. >> one of the other questions you know, to ask, anderson, and one of the clues here is what didn't happen. my guess is whoever fired this had to have significant expertise. these are not the terrorists i used to chase. they were pretty limited. they could fire a shoulder fire missile, pretty basic. this is a military system that requires expertise, but if whoever fired it didn't know that that was a civilian aircraft, that suggests to me that they weren't hooked up enough to an air defense system

like a russian air defense system to track the aircraft. that tells me, maybe rebels. >> jim, your thoughts on that? >> there is another evidence trail here and oddly enough, it's on social media and this is something ukrainian officials sited to me early in the day that a separatisaccept separati tweeted he just shot down an an 26 and added a warning in his tweet, you know, don't fly, we warned you before, don't fly through our skies. those tweets were later deleted and then of course, you have denials from the militants they shot this plane down but in the evidence and clues that's out there now in audition to, as you mentioned, anderson, the intercepted conversations between militants, you have a tweet of all things from one of these militants as this plane

was shot down believing that it was ukrainian military transport. >> and added to that, jim, we should point out, of course, that insurgent have actually claimed credit for shooting down other ukrainian military aircraft over the last several days. >> that's right. >> as always, we'll turn to the panel throughout the evening. stick around. next, what an eyewitness saw. an extraordinary account. you'll hear from one of the few western reporters on the scene of the crash when our extended two-hour coverage of 360 continues tonight. stay tuned. did you know, your eyes can lose vital nutrients as you age?

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the images, it's sickens to look at.

david fitzpatrick took that flight, the picture out flight, same aircraft, identical to the one shot down today. the pieces fell into rebel territory. nick robertson arrived in kiev and joins us tonight. what do we know about the investigation on the ground as it stands now if we can call it an investigation because as of several hours ago when i talked to somebody at the crash site they were talking about separatists soldiers coming through the wreckage not really trained investigators. >> yeah, what the government is saying is that it took a number of hours indeed, they said it's only been six, seven hours now that five acceseparate rescue a investigation teams were allowed in. these investigators are saying they are hampered by the wide area of the debris. they are hampered by armed groups getting in the way of the

work. these intercepted phone conversations indicated part of the debris is being looted and taken away. we've seen pictures of people standing on parts of the aircraft, the crime scene is contaminated and the government doesn't have jurisdiction. really for a thorough international investigation, it seems hard to envision how that can happen, anderson. >> do we know at this point, the reporter i talked to and we'll play that interview shortlierlier in the day talked about locals trying to recover the bodies of those who had died, trying to kind of gather them together, also marking off the spots where other people had been found with white flags. do we know any more details about how the people themselves who died brare being cared for? are there facilities for this number of fatalities? >> it's just not clear to us, at least here in kiev at the moment how that's being handled on the

ground. what we do know from separatists is that they various recalled for humanitarian corridors, a seize fire but different calls from different groups asking for this help to deal with the situation, the bodies and investigation and they don't speak with one voice. there have been different separatists groups that said the black box has been recovered, should be sent to moscow, yet, you have president ukraine saying the responsibility at the moment for what happened lies with ukrainian government. the situation from what we can see here where the government is in the capitol is a confused and unclear picture. >> appreciate you being there. i spoke to one of the first people on the scene, a freelance journalist. listen to what we saw there. i want to go to noah snider, who is an american freelance journalist who i'm told is on site. noah, where are you exactly? >> reporter: we are in a village a little ways north of the city

called torrez. it's kind of a long, long road and a big wide field where the debris and the wreckage from the plane is kind of spread out and there is still e emergency crews working but it's getting pretty dark so folks are trying to wrap up for the day. >> who is in control of the site and what are you seeing? >> reporter: the sight is controlled very clearly by the separatists, dnr, donetsk people's republic. i think most people here have been hearing battles with the ukrainian forces for a few days now who are stationed not far down the road, and i mean, at the moment i'm not seeing much of anything, it's pretty dark. when you get here it's a gruesome scene. there is bodies out through the fields. people said the plane kind of

exploded in the air and everything rained down in bits and pieces. the plane itself, the people inside. >> how in tact is the debris that you saw earlier? i mean, how large are the pieces of debris? >> pretty burnt. it's going to be nearly impossible to establish with any certainty what happened here. there is a few sort of engine rotors, big huge metal pieces that are still in tact, but for the most part, everything is burnt up and charred and scattered over a few kilometers through the fields. >> how wide a field of debris are we talking about? >> i mean, it's hard to say with certainty but maybe five kilometers. it's a pretty wide radius. the debris starts kind of up the road. there is a tail spin and you come a little further down and see the place where the

emergency services crews have set up a base of sorts, some firefighters, rescue teams, and they are kind of in the center of where most of it landed. there is a white tent out in the field where they are collecting bodies, but you can kind of wonder through these open fields. there is not much of anything. there is a chicken farm nearby or chicken factory someone said and then these little sort of ukrainian villages. the homes and not much of anything. >> so an effort has been made and is being made to collect the remains of those on board. >> absolutely. absolutely. people, rescue teams have been going through the fields for the last few hours marking where bodies are by tieing little white cotton ribbons to sticks so when you walk through the fields, if you see one of those, you know that's where a body is. but there is still a lot, i

mean, 295 people on this plane, and i don't think they have found all of them yet, and it's too dark now really to do much more work so people are trying to figure out at the moment what to do with this site for the night. like i said, it's kind of an open field. it's unclear, they don't know what will happen overnight and it's going to be really difficult for anyone to secure this in a kind of way that would be certain that no one can come in. >> we've seen images, noah, of passports, a travel book for bali. are people's possessions clearly visible? are they clearly retrievable or scattered all about? >> it's visible. they are visible and being collect. that's one of the things these rescue teams are doing but if you -- as you walk through the fields and see the bodies, you see a man with his cracked

iphone sticking out of his pocket, you see sort of people's, i mean, clothing everywhere, most of it is ripped off by the air. there is suitcases and stuff in a pile along the road. one fighter was telling us that they have seen lots of headphones, that was the thing they noticed most. people had been flying i guess, you know, listening to music, watching movies and so they have been finding lots of lots of headphones. >> and noah, is an effort being made to collect passports to collect identity documents? >> yeah, i mean, they are trying to collect everything they can, but first and foremost, bodies. i think that's -- my sense is that's the rescue crew's number one priority now, collect as many bodies as they can and gather them under the tents, gathering points. some people are picking up personal effects, some people

are walking straight by them. it's also, you know, keep in mind, it's kind of -- it's long, long grass and like i said again, really wide field so finding things like passports is a matter of chance. >> noah, i appreciate you talking with us. i know this is a horrific scene. >> absolutely. thank you for having me. >> i appreciate the way you've handled it and communicated it to the viewers, noah snider, an american freelance journalist on the scene of this crash. hard to imagine being there. coming up, if it was a missile that brought down this flight, flight 17, we want to take a look at what type of system we're talking about and how it could bring down a passenger jet with 298 people on board at some 33,000 feet. that's next. really... so our business can be on at&t's network

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as we've been reporting, the united states has come to the conclusion malaysian airlines

flight 17 has been shot down. barbara starr was told two different systems picked up a surfaced missile around the time the plane went down. we want to take a closer look what type of system could have done that and how it can bring down a passenger jet flying at that altitude at that speed. >> anderson, to answer the questions, first of all, you have to look at the geography of where this plane was, the circumstances, as it was flying over ukraine we know it was around 32, 33,000 feet above the ground at that moment. we also know that it was about 31 miles or so away from the russian boarder here. so you can't shoot this down with a shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile like we see in so many pictures. you need something more robust. you need something like this. this is the anti missile system that holds four people and highly mobile and has four ready

to launch missiles on it. it can go from a roll to a stop, setup and fire a missile in five minutes and those missiles can acquire a target and fire in 22 seconds is. so let's talk about the power of the missiles themselves. let me bring one in and talk about this. it's about 16 feet long in real life. i've made it a little smaller to get it into the picture here. about 16 feet long, each one will weigh about 1500 pounds. the war head at the tip of it about 154 pounds of high explosive. it doesn't actually have to hit the target. if it simply gets close with that much explosive up there, it can do tremendous damage but it has a guidance systems on it that is operated from vessels on the ground, which track the target, that's what u.s. officials were able to track this system looking for a target out there and guiding this toward it and look at the speed because this really matters. this top speed 2,684 miles per

hour, that's more than three times the speed of sound. it is much, much faster than an airplane like this, which is about 500, 600 miles an hour that means if this is the type of system that hit it and it almost certainly has to be something like this, the people on board may very well have never even seen it coming. anderson? >> tom, thank you very much. fascinating information. back with jim shoe toe, national security analysts bob bear and aviation analysts and private pilot miles o'bryan. how much training would somebody need or multiple people need to be able to operate that? >> you would need a lot, anderson. it's a sophisticated system tracking a plane at that altitude, not like a shoulder fired weapon that would take a week training. so it was a crew that worked together that could track an airplane like that, especially at that altitude of 33,000 feet.

you know, this is russian trained crew now whether they were answering to a russian unit or ukraine or even a ukrainian unit, i can't tell you. it takes a lot. this is a skilled crew. >> we should point out the ukrainian military itself, they most likely, do they have these systems, as well? >> they do have those systems. one reason we know, officials told me that they had a system like this, a base in eastern ukraine over run at the end of last month, end of june, june 29th by prorussian acceseparate who took control of a system. they advertised it on twitter. there are pictures out there of russian militants taking control. that's a reason why ukrainian officials say they believe it was a boot missile system that took this plane down. the other reason they site is because they say it's the only missile system with that

capability in that area, that's just their own conclusion. but those -- that is the missile system at least ukrainian officials have been pointing to since really just the moments after this plane went down. >> also, i just want to be very clear, often early information turns out to be incorrect and so i just want to be careful. we do not know for a fact it was a bouk system. certainly it had to be more than a shoulder fire weapon. miles o'bryan, how difficult is it to tell whether or not an aircraft at 32, 33,000 feet is in fact a military aircraft or civilian aircraft? whoever shot this down, my understanding is it's very possible they could have thought they were shooting down a military aircraft, correct? >> yeah, but if it walks like a duck, it usually is a duck, and

this was the profile of a commercial airliner, 33,000 feet, level on a corridor where commercial airliners would be. now admittedly, this aircraft was flying a little more to the north than it did in previous days because of some weather, but basically, military aircraft have an enhanced chance ponder capability. it's identification friend and then all others. and this would fall in the category of all others. then it's up to the crew to look at the blip on the radar and say does this look like something that has hostile intent? if you have a crew inexperienced or trigger happy or aggressive, they might make a decision to shoot first and ask questions later. >> bob, do you agree with that? again, because miles did raise the possibility that, you know, you shoot first and ask questions later. i'm just trying to think of why from a strategic stand pound, separatists, anybody involved in this conflict would

intentionally shootdown a civilian aircraft from a strategic standpoint, i don't see an argument for anybody doing this intentionally, do you? >> you know, on the face of it, no, it makes no sense to us but you have to look at the russians for instance trying to provoke a true fallout war and don't intend to give it up. what disturbs me is the russian media has been saying that this was an attempt on putin, which, you know, if the russians truly believe that, this is a reason to go to war, to actually send troops into eastern ukraine. as i've been saying, putin will not give that area up. he continues to arm the distents and i don't know what he's capable of. i don't think we'll ever find out for sure. we don't have enough intelligence agents on the ground and the people that really know what happened are the russian military. >> appreciate all you being with

us. more ahead on the context. months of violence in ukraine. we'll take a look what is behind the conflict in ukraine and talk how it bears on today 's tragedy. we're live until the 10:00 hour tonight. but i've managed. ♪ i got to be pretty good at managing my symptoms, except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. ♪ when i finally told my doctor, he said my crohn's was not under control. ♪ he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn's disease. and that in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. [ female announcer ] humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems,

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we have a break down of the nationality. the netherlands 154, malaysia 43, australia 27, 12 of the passengers from indonesia, nine from united kingdom, four from germany, four from belgium, three from the philippines, one from canada and unverified 41, it's not clear where the nationalities are from, if any were american, we do not know at this point, that's total of 291. earlier in the day, the death toll was thought to be 295 and revised to 298. the downing of the plane has global implications. here is what former sec tarpry of state hillary clinton said in an interview with charlie rose.

>> there does seem to be growing awareness that it probably had to be russian insurgent. how we determine that will require forensics but then if there is evidence pointing in that direction, the equipment had to have come from russia. >> malaysia airlines was shot down one day after the u.s. imposed sanctions including the largest oil producer. sanctions sparked by failure to curve violence. ukraine erupted when protests turned deadly. weeks later prorussian armed men seized government buildings in crimea. in march, crimea voted to become part of russia. russia denied sending troops and president putin denies unrest in eastern ukraine where flight 17 was shot down. joining me now is christiane amanpo amanpour.

how much does this change the conflict in ukraine based on what we know? is this really a game changer, potentially a game changer? >> certainly it is. it depends in which direction. i mean, look, if it is proved and some of your guests say it may never be proved where exactly these missiles shot at this plane. if it is proved it is prorussian separatists or even from the russian side of the boarder, god for bid, that would be a massive game changer and let's just say what we do know. it's not just the ukrainians who are accusing the russians or rather the prorussian separatists but over the last couple days, you've mentioned the u.s. is added sanctions on certain individuals and certain targets inside russia but also the europeans, iron lady who is really taking the lead here in europe said again this week that president putin hasn't delivered, hasn't delivered on the peace proposal, the new ukrainian president has offered,

has not stopped the flow of fighters and weapons into eastern ukraine, and i spoke to the ukrainian foreign minister, happened to speak to them at length yesterday and started off by telling me what was coming across the boarder and included anti-aircraft mi anti-aircraft missiles and tanks and the like. so this has been going on not to mention that three ukrainian planes have been downed since june 14th. so there is a pattern, that we know here. >> and jill, you think this actually could be a really fatal blow to u.s. russia relationens. >> there is no question if there is any relationship left. really, it's the end of the road, i think, if there was one drop of faith that vladimir putin was really sincere that he wanted to bring this to an end, whether justified or not, i think in washington that is gone and i think ditto for moscow. i think vladimir putin has basically given up. i mean, publicly, he would say

let's keep trying to bring people together peacefully, but when it comes down to it, i don't think he believes that the united states or the west want to do much of anything. and i think anderson, one of the dangers here is that there is no -- that there is a lot of, let's call it serendipity, there may be a better word but vladimir putin wants to crank up the discontent and then kind of let it simmer and bring it up, crank it up again when it is useful to him in order, originally, to damage the ukrainian government. now, it may be that he's cranked it up so much there is no way even he can really stop it. he can stop the weapons, of course, he can close the boarders but the people who are carrying out things like this, yes, definitely, but even if he did, there are a lot of people in that conflict zone right now out of control and who want -- who are taking thing sbos into r

own hands and it's dangerous. >> and there is a change in the capabilities of ukraine's military just in the last several weeks, not necessarily in this region but in other parts against the separatists. >> well, here is the thing, we go back to crimea. the ukrainians basically made a decision not to take on the russians. the russians who came in and annexed crimea. why? because they knew they couldn't fight the russians and win. we have spoken about this from the beginning of this crisis. there is no way ukraine would voluntarily get itself into a war with russia so it didn't. it stopped and did not take an russia in crimea. after president was elected, he then decided to try for a peace process, plus he did go on an offense sieve there. so the ukrainian capability that

you talk about was against the holdouts where they did take back the city and now those separatists have gone back to donetsk and making their stand there. so that's where they are concentrated, but the president says the president of ukraine says he's been trying since he was elected to them, we'll talk, and we want a peaceful end to the process. >> thanks for being with us. we'll bring more, we're on until 10:00 tonight. we'll have more from eastern ukraine on downing of this aircraft. next, the other breaking news tonight, major escalation in the middle east. israel moving to gaza. we'll take you there on our special expanded edition of

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welcome back, the other breaking story today after far-reaching inch cases, after bombings and intense fighting, israel launched a ground operation. the prime minister benjamin netanyahu ordered the defensive a few hours ago. the point is to destroy tunnels into israeli territory, the tunnels hamas tried to use to infiltrate early this morning.

hamas is condemning ground action and saying israel will pay a heavy price. joining me live is wolf blitzer and ben wedeman. let's start with you, ben. what have you been seeing on the ground in gaza? does the air offensive continue as the ground invasion is underway? >> actually, anderson, we've seen sort of a lessoning of the air activity in the last few hours with, of course, the exception of some air strikes very close to our office here in central gaza, one building about 400 meters away from here was hit about half an hour ago and according to reports from the hospital, five people were wounded there but more than the air activity, what we're seeing is fighting to the north, it appears that israeli troops have come in into the northern part of the gaza strip. we've been seeing a lot of flairs being fired there and also behind me along the eastern boarder behind the neighborhood

in audition to further south according to some reports, israeli tanks reached a highway and if they are going to follow the same pattern from back in january 2009, they may be going all the way to the sea. what they did then was cut the gaza strip in half. so we're definitely seeing a lot more action and basically since about 8:00 p.m. this evening, we saw a real intensification of air strikes and what sounded like tank fire. >> what does israel hope to accomplish with this? >> they hope to destroy as much of hamas infrastructure, stockpiles of the rockets and missiles but the first objective

is to go after under ground tunnels they built. one was opened up this morning on the israeli side tunnel built from gaza into israel. they showed video of the destruction of that tunnel earlier. they say they killed 13 hamas infiltrators. hamas denies those 13 were killed. in any case, the israelis say their mission right now is to do on the ground what the israeli air force, f-16s or f-15s can't do. they have to go on the ground and military commanders, including a spokes pan for the idf, told me it's not just hundreds of israeli ground troops but thousand haves gone in and mobilized 50,000 reservists and indeed another 20,000 are about to believe mobilized. this is a pretty significant military operation. >> ben, of usually, you have been there before when israel came into gaza. the risks for a ground operation like this on both sides are

great. >> yes, of course. keeping in mind that gaza is a very crowded place and what we saw for instance in 2009 is even those areas where the israeli troops went in and avoided the really crowded areas, but there are people living everywhere here. there were areas where we saw just one house after another completely destroyed. the roads ripped up and of course, very high civilian casualties and that is of course the danger, as well. now for the israelis, of course, they are entering into territory with the fighters, whether they are hamas, the popular front for the liberation. this is their turf. they know this area very well and hamas has made it clear that they believe or they are confident that just as they have been able to increase the range

of their rockets, that their ground forces are better trained now, better trained now than ever before, so they are saying that they will be able to confront the israeli troops but we'll see if that's actually the case. >> ben wedeman, be careful. wolf blitzer, as well. stay with us for another hour of 360. we'll have more what is happening in gaza and israel and the latest information that continues to come in for us on the shootdown of flight 17. we'll be right back.

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good evening, thanks for joining us. welcome to another special hour of live "360." 4:00 a.m. in eastern ukraine, breaking news, the shootdown of an airliner in ukraine and the launch of ground forces into gaza. it's a busy and frankly, grim night as it has been a gram day. we begin with the question everyone is asking about the downing of malaysian airlines flight 17. who did it? who tracked the plane? who aimed the missal? who launched it and on whose behalf? whoever did it, this is the destruction. this is the crash site and in that field of twisted metal, the remaining of 298 men, women and children including three infants. we got a break down of the na nationalities of who lost their