see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business. built for business. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com who is responsible from kiev to kuala lumpur. leaders demanding quick action and answers. >> we call it neither accident nor catastrophe. it's a terrorist attack. >> we insist that the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice. >> and in the middle east, the cycle of violence escalates. >> it's going to be a combined attack from the air, and the ground.

>> israel executes a ground invasion into gaza. its third in six years. we do want to welcome our viewers in the united states, and all around the world. i'm rosemary church. >> i'm michael holmes. we're following two major stories this hour. in fact, israel launching that ground invasion in gaza. they say to stop rocket attacks by hamas and go after tunnels that go under the border between gaza and into israel. we're going to be live in jerusalem for the latest. >> but we begin with the tragic crash of malaysian airlines flight 17. all 298 people onboard are presumed dead. witnesses say the plane exploded in the air, raining charred debris over eastern ukraine. the u.s. believes it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, but has not determined who did it. investigators will be collecting clues from the gruesome crash

site. ukraine's president blames pro-russian separatists for what happened. >> translator: i want to point your attention to the fact that we call it neither accident nor catastrophe. it's a terrorist attack. >> now we want to play for you what ukraine says is intercepted audio of pro-russian separatists discussing the mh-17 crash. although at the time they didn't know what it was. the ukrainian government provided the english subtitles. the identities of those speaking. and the photographs we cannot independently confirm the authenticity of all of that. but have a listen.

>> extraordinary exchange there. cnn could not confirm the authenticity of that at this point. tensions have been high in the east of ukraine, since november, when the president did a u-turn over a trade agreement with

europe in favor of russia. now, that sparked protests in kiev. and the situation has continued to deteriorate ever since. christopher miller is the editor of the kiev post, and he joins me now from the ukrainian capital. thank you so much for talking with us. of course, at this point, ukraine is doing all it can to point the finger of blame at pro-russian separatists. of course, when you listen to that exchange, and of course, we haven't confirmed it, but it does seem extraordinary, and perhaps convincing to some analysts here. >> it does very much so. the ukrainian authorities spent all of last night on ukrainian television here touting the video as evidence of russian involvement. obviously you can see in the video, at least you can see the subtitles, they were very much surprised they had apparently shot down this 777 jet. ukraine is calling it a

terrorist attack. you know, they're trying to bury these separatist groups. and connect them with whatever evidence they can gather to russia. they do believe that these separatist groups that are taking orders from russia, national security and defense council member yesterday by phone told me that he believed that they were taking orders from the top, in his words, and they are trying to place this on russia. >> of course, we can't prove that, it has to be said we don't know who did this at this point. >> no, we don't. >> there's a lot of speculation. but whether they took commands from russia, and that is perhaps unlikely in this situation, given the conversation we just heard there, which we can't a authentica authenticate, but at this point if we remove that possibility,

the ramifications for russia are still immense, aren't they? for vladimir putin, even if he had nothing to do with this, which is how it seems to appear, the fact that he has been supporting these rebel factions, these pro-russia militants there on the eastern side of the ukraine, near the border with russia, of course, you've got all of those russian forces amassed on the border there. what are the ramifications for vladimir putin just given that? christopher miller, can you still hear me? it looks like we've -- okay, it looks like we've lost him for now. certainly getting a perspective there on how this is playing out in kiev, in ukraine. they are determined to point the finger of blame at these pro-russian separatists. we have to emphasize at this point the investigation is still very early. we're getting all of these

pieces, trying to put them together. by no means do we have the big picture at this point. and now to the other major and developing story. israeli troops now on the ground inside gaza. they say hunting for hamas militants and tunnels as well. this operation launched late on thursday, after ten days of air strikes aimed at stopping militant rockets from the gaza. becky anderson with the latest for us from jerusalem. becky, we've heard the first israeli military casualty in all of this, bring us up to date on what you're hearing on the ground. >> reporter: that is correct. one israeli soldier confirmed dead in this operation, michael. two israeli soldiers confirmed injured. and some 14 hamas operatives, according to the idf, killed in

this operation. 67,000 israeli reservists called up. of course, that is in addition to the military operating on the ground, from the air and from the sea. this is an incursion. the israelis say not an invasion. they say it is targeted at knocking out the hamas operatives, particularly those who have been working through tunnels between gaza and israel. we've just got this latest video in from the israel defense force. i'll run it for you now and tell you what you are seeing. according to the idf, this video shows a strike on a tunnel used, they say, for terror purposes. a strike -- as a result of that strike, a rocket is discharged through the idf, the militia's purposes of these tunnels. now, this is really important, because it was an attack

through -- or at least a thwarted attack on thursday it now seems clear, that the israelis stopped an attack from hamas operatives into israel through a tunnel. we've got video of that from thursday for you which i want to run now. which seems to have precipitated the decision to go ahead with this ground incursion. what we understand is that the decision to launch it was reportedly taken at a security cabinet meeting on tuesday. and that was after hamas rejected the egyptian cease-fire initiative. but the actual button, as it were, was pressed on thursday after this. and this was the thwarted attack, zlgs say, by 13 hamas operatives into israel from gaza. michael, there are about, we're told, maybe ten, possibly more tunnels. and these are significant, some 25 meters below the ground, or

feet below the ground, i believe. and high. we're not talking about tunnels that people crawl through here. these are significant tunnels built over a period of time. and as you and i know, there are many tunnels between the border of gaza and egypt through which trucks are brought, cattle are brought, vehicles moved, when those tunnels were operating. so these are significant tunnels, and the zlgs say they want to take them out in order to take out those who are fighting them, and provoking them from gaza. i think one of the numbers that's really stuck out to me, michael, this morning to me as well, the u.n. releasing some numbers today. and they say the cha says 57,900 kids in gaza have experienced death, injury or loss of home over the past ten days. and now require psychosocial support. nearly 60,000 children. these numbers are just shocking,

aren't they. however you look at them. not getting a lot out of gaza this morning. but as we get more video footage, we'll bring it to you. >> certainly horrific situation still there. becky anderson there in jerusalem. becky, thanks. more on our breaking news on malaysia airlines jet shot down over ukraine. that's coming up next. >> almost 300 people on board from at least nine countries. their friends and family heart broken, of course. and all wanting to know why this happened. avo: waves don't care what age you are.

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heartbreaking scenes from family members of those lost on that crash, for the second time in four months. malaysia's national carrier is beset by tragedy. >> the prime minister najib razak has been addressing the world once again. >> the flight, passenger and crew came from many different countries. but today we are all united in grief. >> malaysia airlines has released a partial list of the nationalities of the 298 people onboard flight 17. 154 are dutch, 45 are malaysian, including all crew members, 27 are australian, 12 indonesian. it includes 9 brittons, four germans and four belgians. 3 are from the philippines and one is from canada.

three infants are among the dead. authorities are still trying to confirm the nationalities of the remaining passengers. so far no americans on that list. a friend of one of flight attendants onboard spoke to our anderson cooper a little earlier. >> did you actually take her to the airport? >> she just told me that she would have a transparent, and then she said it would be all right for you to come pick me up. i said, why not, i'll be at the airport. i said, i'll wait for you to come back. and never come back. >> does it seem real to you at this point? >> sorry? >> does it seem real? >> i just hope it is false. i try to message her, but no answer. >> so hard to hear her reaction

there. noah snider is a free-lance journalist who spent most of the day thursday at the crash site talking to witnesses and giving their firsthand accounts of exactly what happened. he spoke with cnn's don lemon a little earlier. we have to warn you, some of what he has to say is very graphic. >> people are trying to identify bodies, mark the spots where bodies have fallen. there's three firemen and four sort of search-and-rescue team vehicles lined up along the road. but the way it's being done, is not systematic by any means. they're basically just laying little white cotton ribbons to sticks, and put eting them in t ground where there's a body. and there's sort of rebels wandering the fields. they're as stunned as anyone else at, i think, the overwhelm

i ing -- the overwhelming mood is this is darker perhaps than daylight. you can see everything. >> you appear to be more matter of fact, at least the way your description of what's going on than earlier when we heard from you. you appeared to be devastated. you set the crash site, bodies everywhere, organs splayed out, too gruesome to post photographs. this is an absolute disaster. and you #ukraine. in the initial moments when you were witnessing what happened, take us back to that. >> sure. we heard the news while we were in donetsk, which is about an hour and a half drive from here. there were a few news flashes on the wires that a plane had been brought down. a civilian plane potentially. so we drove out here and found a sort of strange scene of smoke rising over the hillside.

rebels kind of waving us through checkpoints, which they normally don't do. and we found, i think, what i said last night -- i mean, it's a total disaster and a total tragedy. looking at it now in daylight, you wander through these fields and you pretty much have to watch every step, because if you don't, you could step on a person's organ. it was like it was raining body parts. and like i said, i think the folks on the ground here have very little idea how to respond to this. it's not something that really fits into any schema. from what i've seen, what's surprising is how few people there are. this place is like nearly empty. there's emergency services teams

clustered on the road, and little pockets of rebels, like three guys wandering through the fields. kind of looking glassy eyed at what's left here. i don't see any sign of people looting bodies. not that these are bodies you would want to loot. i mean, pretty much anything had on them has been destroyed. and if you -- at some point the photographs will come out of what's happened here. if you walk up to these bodies, you are not about to stick your hands on them. people are turned inside out. the notion that someone is going around to me is pretty absurd. the stuff about moving plane parts, i haven't seen any of that. in part, because most of the plane burned up. in the crash site, you know, there's metal from the plane, the alloy has melted and

solidified into this kind of thin layer of silver on the ground. >> noah snider, a free-lance journalist talking to don lemon. a young man there on the scene, very disturbing. of course, the worry for investigators when they look there is that people going through this, it's going to be very difficult. it's going to be hard to actually get in there and do a proper investigation. >> absolutely. it's interesting to note, i actually followed him on twitter, young man free-lance journalist, in donetsk, and he's been tweeting from there for a while. he was one of the first people to give an account of the scene there. what a horrible thing to see. we're going to have more on malaysia airlines flight 17 shot down in ukraine. >> as accusations fly over who is responsible for this tragedy, there are calls for a massive international investigation. [ male announcer ] this is the cat that drank the milk... [ meows ]

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>> unbelievable. the u.s., of course, saying the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile in eastern ukraine on thursday. rebel-held part of the country. the boeing 777 was flying from amsterdam to kuala lumpur. all 298 people onboard presumed dead. >> wreckage and bodies strewn across fields, some 30 miles, or 50 kilometers from the russian border. a journalist who visited the site called it a gruesome scene. >> as we wait for definitive answers, and there are few at the moment, ukrainian officials say pro-russian separatists they say are responsible for the crash. now, the ukrainian president petro poroshenko said, quote, it is a terrorist action. but the russian counterpart is laying the blame on kiev. >> translator: i want to emphasize this tragedy would not have happened if there was peace on the land. if military activities had not resumed in the southeast of

ukraine. of course, the state over which territory happened, is responsible for this terrible tragedy. >> this is the second tragedy involving malaysia airlines this year. you recall flight mh-370 disappeared in march with 239 people onboard. andrew stevens joins us from kuala lumpur with more. andrew, you've just arrived at the airport there. paint us the scene there. what are people saying? what's been the reaction so far? >> reporter: we literally just got off the plane, rosemary, so we're still getting through immigration. there have been reports, though, that relatives of some of those onboard the flight 17 were here, and were very frustrated because they couldn't get a passenger list. malaysian airlines want to check and double-check the manifest of the people on that plane.

make sure it's correct so there's not false information going out. obviously your heart goes out to the families of the victims. particularly here in kuala lumpur. as you say, another tragedy for malaysian airlines. 173 days ago, flight 370 disappeared without a trace. we still have no conclusive information as to where that is. the prime minister of malaysia did give a press conference a couple hours earlier, and he described it by saying it's a tragic day today, in what's already been a tragic year. that is najib wrazak speaking a a press conference. he wants to get more access to the crash site. and he said that the malaysian government is insisting the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice. another tragic day here. we understand there are family

members in the airport. we are currently investigating that at the moment. >> just shocking news for malaysia. andrew stevens reporting there from kuala lumpur, having just arrived there at the airport. >> just amazing when you think it was only a few months ago people were at that airport as well with 370. here they go again. >> the coincidence is extraordinary. >> horrible. ahead on the continuing coverage of the tragedy in eastern ukraine -- >> we'll hear from a terror expert on what he thinks happened to mh-17. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] if you can't stand the heat, get off the test track. get the mercedes-benz you've been burning for at the summer event, going on now at your authorized mercedes-benz dealer. but hurry, offers end july 31st.

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you are watching cnn's special coverage of the crash of malaysia airlines flight 17. we do want to welcome our viewers in the united states, and of course, all around the world. i'm rosemary church. >> i'm michael holmes. the united states said the jet carrying 298 people over eastern ukraine was shot down, but has not yet determined who did it. ukrainian authorities, though, they are saying it was pro-russia separatists. >> they say they intercepted a phone call between separatist leaders discussing the situation. chief u.s. security correspondent jim schitto has more on this horrific crash. >> reporter: the malaysian jet fell through the sky over eastern ukraine in a fireball, and a black cloud.

pieces of burning debris viz ishl, trailing gray smoke. on the ground, wreckage littered the landscape spread over a large area, evidence they tell cnn that the boeing 777 came apart at high altitude. ukrainian officials quickly blamed a missile strike by pro-russian separatist. the foreign minister telling cnn, quote, it is as clear as day. they have been hunting our planes for weeks. ukraine's newly elected pro-western president called it an act of terrorism. >> translator: we do not call an incident or catastrophe but terrorist action. >> the u.s. does not know who is responsible. russian president vladimir putin is already laying his own blame saying the state over whose territory it happened, naming ukraine, is responsible for this terrible tragedy. putin delivered the news of the

crash to president obama during a phone call to discuss new u.s. sanctions against russia. sanctions sparked by russian support for ukrainian militants, including supplying weapons and fighters. >> it looks like it may be a terrible tragedy. the united states will offer any assistance we can to help determine what happened and why. >> reporter: president obama has since spoken to ukraine's president and malaysia's prime minister pledging u.s. support to determine exactly what happened. >> if the plane was indeed shot down, we insist that the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice. >> reporter: ukrainian officials not just blaming pro-russian separatists, they are in fact blaming russia. and as evidence, they released what they say is an intercepted phone call between a pro-russian militant and russian intelligence agent. i spoke with the deputy foreign

minister of ukraine, he said, quote, russia arms terrorists. they are murderers. the world must stop putin. it is easy to see how the shootdown could easily escalate the military conflict between ukraine and russia. jim shuuto, cnn, washington. the second time in four months that malaysia airlines has lost a boeing 777. the first, of course, mh 370 which is still missing to this day. boeing's twin-engine 777 has an excellent safety record and is one of the most sophisticated airliners flying today. it can hold anywhere between 300 and 450 passengers. has a range of about 9,200 kilometers. flight mh-17 was carrying 298 people, heading from amsterdam to kuala lumpur. >> ukrainian officials say terrorists shot down the aircraft. glen is an aviation security

expert who has studied terrorism issues for more than two decades. and he joins us via skype from amsterdam. thank you, sir, for talking with us. we're slowly getting pieces pulled together here. but there isn't a complete picture here. but i'd be interested to get your idea of how you think this happened, and who you think is responsible for bringing down this plane. >> well, i think the main lines of the story as has been developing, we're looking at a missile attack from the ground. all indications so far are that likely it's a rebel element. the question then becomes, if that's so, is there any level of government support on the part of russia that may be called direct in terms of facilitating this group. i think we'll start seeing the acceleration of the legal debate here as to what do we call terrorism, what constitutes a terrorist group. in terms of the politics, i

think the terrorism issue will clearly get new emphasis in the whole situation surrounding the ukraine, and the eastern part of the country. it looks like a difficult situation for civil aviation in the sense that most terrorism that we look at, it's a bit more clear-cut that it's smaller groups that are aautonomous. that's been the threat in the last decade. here we're looking at a potential for groups, which some groups will -- some governments may call a terrorist group, and others might just call a separatist force. so here we're dealing with potential government ties to a group, so the whole issue of terrorism here will become a little bit more difficult for authorities, including airlines in terms of determining guilt to apply this term. >> so investigation, in the early stages, right now, how do you make that link? what are the next steps in trying to establish who indeed

was responsible, and as you point out, whether those, if it is the separatists, if it is those rebel groups, pro-russian groups, whether there is some sort of link to the russian government? how do you establish that? >> i think you're going to be looking at sort of several main avenues of investigation right now. it's going to be approved for the evidence that comes from the aircraft records. it's going to be the evidence that comes from electronics, radar, satellite imagery, and the circumstantial evidence such as how the u.s. is looking right now at actual facts on the ground. and the ukrainians are as well. in other words, interviews, what can we trace about where this missile battery might have been located and who was manning it. all these things are going to be coming together in the days ahead. what's challenging here is the environment. just like the incident at lockerbie in 1988. it's a debris field spread over

a large area. it's going to be difficult to find a focus to the investigation. the malaysians are taking a lead role. but the question is, who's going to be actually coordinating this. to the extent it will be the ukraine, they will have to gain access to this area. it's not clear if the investigators will have access to the entire area. it's also not clear at that point who really will be in the lead. if ukraine takes that lead, then we might get accusations of rebel forces, perhaps maybe of the russians that they're not a neutral player in this. so it's going to be a complicated story here in the days ahead, figuring out who can take a clear lead that's authoritative and that everybody can agree with. >> clearly at this point, it can't be ukraine, it can't be russia, it can't be the separatists. it has to be an international body of sorts, a team of investigators to go in there. the big problem at this point is that crash site is not intact

anymore. people have gone in. there's looting going on, people are going through all of the items there. possibly even taking some of the parts of that plane away from the area. that is going to complicate this investigation incredibly so, isn't it? >> absolutely. i mean, the potential for obtaining of evidence, the potential for loss of evidence, the lack of coordination, in terms of the actual types of metrics you want to use in an investigation like this, there's a high probability that we're going to have loss of coherence here in the process. the bigger problem there becomes, there's a risk much this bucking a tainted investigation, if you will. and that makes it highly likely that all sorts of political factors are going to enter into the equation very rapidly here. and i think it's likely we're going to see some accusations of people moving things, people maybe altering data, people

withholding data. i think today we'll also start seeing some more pressure on russia to make sure that its role in this process, including looking at its role of investigating the black box, that essentially the international community gets access to that process. so there's going to be a lot of politics in this investigation from the start. >> yeah. now, at this point, the whereabouts of the black box is a mystery. so that is yet to be determined. glenn schoen, thank you for your perspective on this story. we appreciate it. >> you're welcome. >> by the way, i noticed a tweet from the organization of security and cooperation in europe, they're sending a helicopter team, a team by helicopter this morning to the crash site. hopefully somebody's going to get in there and get some semblance of order to the investigation. >> that's exactly what they need some sort of transparency. with conflict going on, it's very hard to get a good clear

picture. >> absolutely. we'll keep you up to date with all of the developments on the ukraine in the hours ahead. plus, as israeli boots hit the ground in gaza, we will talk to a former israeli ambassador about the strategy behind the new phase of that operation. [ male announcer ] if you had a dollar for every dollar car insurance companies say they'll save you by switching, you'd have, like, a ton of dollars. but how are they saving you those dollars? a lot of companies might answer "um" or "no comment."

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the israeli military says one of its soldiers has been killed in its invasion of gaza. >> officials say the operation is targeting tunnels used by hamas militants to infiltrate the jewish state, trying to mitigate the rocket capability of hamas as well. >> we want to look at these live pictures. this is gaza right now. but the -- it looks -- well, we're seeing a lot of smoke there. at this point, we don't know, we don't want to speculate exactly what is happening. at this stage, that is the scene. of course, when the incursion, the ground incursion was launched thursday night there was chaos. >> ben wedeman was tweeting throughout the night and said it was by far the heaviest bombardment he had heard in ten days of this conflict. israel's wider mission to stop

the rocket fire from gas a. >> palestinian officials say 246 people in gaza have been killed. and more than 1,800 wounded since israel's offensive began last monday. the united nations is calling on israel to do more to protect innocent lives. >> i regret that despite my repeated urgings, and those of many world leaders together, on already dangerous conflict has now escalated even further. there have been a number of incidents involving the deaths of civilians, including the appalling killing of four boys on a beach in gaza city. i urge israel to do far more to stop civilian casualties. >> all right. let's get insight into that

strategy. and the broader issue as this ground offensive in gaza continues. cnn middle east analyst michael lawrence is a former israeli ambassador to the united states. also the ambassador and residence at the atlantic council joins us now by skype from tel aviv. ambassador, going in was always going to be a risk, a risk of casualties for palestinians and israeli soldiers. do you think this will be a quick operation or something more extensive and lasting? >> good day to you. good to be with you. i can't say with any confidence this is going to be a short operation. sources within the israel defense forces last night indicate this could be a lengthy operation. a week, perhaps two weeks. much depends on what type of resistance the forces encounter in gaza. last night the immediate pretext for the incursion was actually not the rocket fire, but an attack that was mounted by

palestinian gunmen through a tunnel that went under the israeli border, 13 armed hamas gunmen came out. they tried to attack a civilian farm within israel. israel has the iron dome system to protect it against the rockets. it's done astoundingly to protect against the rockets. but it has no high-tech response to tunnels. basically a medieval military technology. and so what the civil defense forces are doing is looking for the intranses to the tunnel, some not far from the border and within houses, and they're hidden. that is the first job of the army. it's very difficult to tell now in advance how long that task will take to complete. >> a pretty good job of finding those guys with infrared technology, and able to counterattack. i guess one of the issues here is a bit of a conundrum, if you like, for israel, the fact that

they -- correct me if i'm wrong, they really don't want hamas to fall from power, because they at least know who they're dealing with. and what they don't want is what might come afterwards. islamic jihad, and perhaps anarchy. it's a difficult thing, they want to hit hamas, and not destroy them, is that a fair assessment? >> conundrum indeed, that's a good word to use. keep in mind, among the expressed objectives of israel's military campaign against hamas is not the unseating of hamas. not the pushing hamas out of gaza. what israel would like to see hamas demilitarized, deprived of its missile arsenal and find a solution for the tunnel threat. hamas without tunnels is not hamas anymore. it's just another extremist organization that's not going to threaten israeli civilians. >> you know, in terms of the end game, let's talk about the

status quo, or the status quo before this latest conflict. that wasn't sustainable surely, unpaid salaries at the moment, problems with everything from water quality to electricity, exports not permitted. you know, i talked to somebody in gaza a couple of days ago saying, give gaza something to lose and we might get somewhere in all of this. and israel plays a role in this. does israel have to give something up in order to give gaza something to lose? >> i think if you would give gazans a different government, they would have a different future. hamas received hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. that went to making rockets, making fortified bunkers, underground tunnels which cost hundreds of millions of dollars. instead of building schools and hospital and investing in infrastructure and education, all of that money went into offensive capabilities designed at the end of the day to kill civilians.

gaza, israel pulled out of gaza in 2005, left it with an infrastructure, left it with greenhouses. they were all destroyed. gaza could have been, you know, the switzerland of the mediterranean. but under a different leadership. >> europe's not saying israel's not affecting life in gaza, surely, with the economic blockade, and other influences, too. i mean, the coalition -- not coalition government, but a government of unity with gaza, now salaries aren't being paid, money's being blocked, no taxes are being given back to gaza. the place is broken. are you saying israel doesn't have any influence on conditions in gaza? >> israel has a maritime blockade that's designed to prevent the smuggling of weapons into gaza. not the -- prevent the provision of food or essential supplies. israel kept its border crossings

to gaza open. they only closed because hamas shelled those border crossings. they shelled their own border crossings. egypt has had a complete blockade. and that perhaps has affected the gaza economy even more. but hamas was doing a very brisk business in smuggling through those tunnels. once egypt closed those tunnels, hamas could no longer pay those salaries, and it was hamas corruption, many hamas leaders have made millions of dollars and squirreled those millions of dollars away and deprived their people of it. it would be very easy to blame israel for the economic deprivation of gaza. but if you look on the other side, you look at ramallah on the west bank, these cities are thriving. that's because they have an administration which is not committed to israel's destruction. it's that simple. >> we'll have to leave it there. michael orren, former ambassador to the u.s. thank you so much, ambassador.

>> thank you. good day. we turn now to another major story. we are keeping an eye on southern china, bracing for the arrival of a super typhoon which is expected to make landfall in quongdong prove ninsince in a c of hours. how prepared is china for this and how powerful is it at this point? >> this thing has intensified from a category 1 earlier today to a category 5. so how much time everyone had to prepare, you just have to imagine, not enough. as far as the intensity, in fact, i think this has gotten stronger since the last advisory, which was already terrible here at 230 kilometers per hour, 140 miles per hour. i think it's a little bit stronger now. let's examine this a little bit closer. look at the eye now. the inner eye wall, now brushing and hugging the northeastern coast of the island. the strongest winds at the

surface on planet earth are occurring across this region. you do not see this every day. look at the radar perspective. you'll be able to see the core of the storm beginning to push in. look at that rain right around the center. my goodness, this is just, again, one of the most powerful typhoons to hit china. 1973, and 2006, and this in fact may top both of those. so this is indeed a dangerous situation that we'll continue to watch throughout the day today. the concern is storm surge. there is a bay, because of the orientation along the coast, is very vulnerable to this. we have to watch for that. 10 million people are not just going to be in the path of the typhoon, they are going to experience the tie fan winds here. and we're talking about the storm surge, and the rains, and michael and rosemary, the topography, once you get inland, you get into the hilly terrain. and with all that rainfall, the potential for landslides over the next few days on top of the

storm surge. >> big concern. >> staggering amount of rain. yes, storm surge always an issue. thanks, ivan, appreciate it. we'll get the latest on the malaysian airlines plane crash in ukraine. >> and take a look at the technology behind the missile that could have brought it down.

we are following breaking news out of ukraine, where a

malaysian airline passenger plane with 298 people onboard has crashed. the plane was headed from amsterdam to kuala lumpur when it disappeared from radar over eastern ukraine. >> the region gripped by fighting between the rebels and the ukrainian government. the crisis began back in february. that's when ukraine's pro-russian government was ousted by pro-european demonstrators. remember the demonstrations in independence square. now, the new government was promptly installed. they called for elections to be held back on may 25th. meanwhile, russian forces gradually moved in, and seized the crimean peninsula. although the russians denied they were there. they were. >> yeah, and in march, crimean residents voted to join russia. but ukraine and the west

dismissed that referendum as illegal. at the same time thousands of russian troops massed along the border with ukraine. in april, pro-russian separatists occupied government buildings in parts of eastern ukraine. >> in the east of the country they held their own referendums and declared independence. that, too, was also dismissed as illegitimate. the turnout was not great. a lot of claims of intimidation at the ballot box there. now, on may 25th, poroshenko won the election. >> fighting between ukraine and pro-russian separatists continued on june 20th. poroshenko declared a ten-day cease-fire. the clashes resumed after it expired. now back to the crash itself. a ukrainian interior ministry adviser claims a russian-made buk, that's what they call it, a surface-to-air missile hit the

boeing 777. it's more than capable of bringing down a commercial jet. here's tom foreman. >> if you want to figure out what could have hit this plane, you have to think about the circumstances of the plane at the time. it was about 32,000, 33,000 in the feet in the air over ukraine, it was about 30 miles away from the russian border. so you cannot hit this with some shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile. they're just not strong enough. what you would need is something much more like this. this is the buk anti-missile system. it's one of those being talked about in this case. it is a four-man unit. it has four ready-to-fire missiles up on top. it can set up and fire very quickly and it can move away after firing very quickly. and those missiles have a tremendous amount of power. let's bring one in here and talk about that. each one is about 16 feet long. we're showing them a little bit smaller here just to make it all fit. it will weigh about 1,500

pounds. and it has a 154-pound warhead on it. that means 154 pounds of high explosive. it doesn't actually have to hit the target, it just has to get close to it. but with electronics guidance systems, it can get very close, and it can doo it in a short period of time. 22 seconds from the time its radar achoirs a target to the time the missile launches. it travels at a top speed of 2,684 miles per hour. that means even if it were fired from 30 miles away, it could have hit a plane like this in 40 seconds or less. that means people onboard would absolutely never even see it coming. >> tom foreman there. you're watching special coverage here on cnn. i'm michael holmes. >> i'm rosemary church. after a short break, live from london with the latest on the investigation into the downing of flight 17.

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see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. we continue our breaking news on two fronts on cnn international and welcome to our viewers in the united states. first, the crash of a passenger jet over eastern ukraine and the israeli grounds offensive in gaza now under way. we start