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after officials say the men hunt is a multistate operation. syrian rebels reach of the third largest city. we speak to the family of american journalist austin tice who say he is still alive after being held hoffert -- old hostage for more than 12 years. ♪ hello and welcome to world news america. police in several u.s. states are searching for a person of interest in the killing of a u.s. health care company ceo in new york city. officials told the bbc's partners u.s. news the searches ongoing across new york state, etiquette and new jersey. local media reports the man sought by police have left the city on a bus to atlanta.

video appears to show the suspect moments before he shot united health care chief executive brian thompson on wednesday. here is what we know so far. police say the suspect was first seen on manhattan's upper west side two hours before the shooting. more than 90 minutes later he walked to the hilton hotel in midtown manhattan where he waited to launch his attack. thompson walked from his hotel to the health a five minutes later. the suspect shot thompson at least twice before riding towards central park on a bike. let speak to our north america correspondent who is in new york city. what is the latest with this investigation? >> as you say, the very latest from police sources via our partner cbs news is the suspect may have left new york on a greyhound bus bound for atlanta, georgia. the atlanta police have been

informed. that does not mean if you get on that bus he traveled all the way. this search is being expanded to a number of states beyond new york. they are in that sense no closer to a breakthrough in terms of apprehending the suspect. the weight of evidence is on their side. manhattan behind me is one of the most filmed and photographed places in the world. we have these multiple images of the suspect. various places in the city. the most significant is the one most recently released by the police taken in a hostile on the west side of manhattan where he is believed to have stayed showing clearly the suspect's face. it was said to have been taken during an exchange with the receptionist at the hostel when she asked him if he would remove his mask. the police say it was a moment of flirtation and if that is the case, it is a moment that may

have given them their most significant piece of evidence yet. no further speculation from the police about motive. that is being discussed more widely. and the concern among the insurance industry more generally. brian thompson was senior executive, chief executive of america's biggest health care company. other companies, we are seeing removing the identities of their senior managers photographs and names from their websites. that shows you how concerning this has been for the industry more generally. >> a stunning skyline. thank you for that. let's discuss the investigation a little further with a retired nypd detective and law enforcement consultant. thanks for being with us. talk to us about this operation. . how do you begin to organize a manhunt like this? what is involved? >> thank you for having me.

this is a quite a daunting task to catch someone who took great lengths to conceal their identity. and then disappear into the streets of manhattan and it is like a where's waldo sartre -- where's waldo sort of search. new york city has almost 10 million people in it. to find someone who does not want to be found and could be concealed by being the person right next to you on the subway his -- is an interesting task to overcome. luckily there is some debate as to whether this was a hired hitman or whether this was a disgruntled ex-employee or someone with a beef against the insurance company. it is too early to tell that. my personal feeling is if it was a hired hitman, a professional sort of hitman would be a bit of

a ghost. you might see him come to the scene and commit the act but then they would disappear and not leave any clues. certainly not expose themselves in any way to any video surveillance. >> on that point and that image we have of when he removed the mask at the hostel, how crucial is that to the operation? is the technology that can be used like we see in the movies running that face against other images across the u.s. to possibly track him? >> through the use of facial recognition, there should be enough points on that particular image where the catch to this is if the person was a prior client of the criminal justice system, then we would be easily able to match the face to someone who had been previously arrested. there a good possibility this person was never arrested in their lives. if the person is not in the

crime database, that is not going to help that much. what i was putting out on another news agency earlier, i said there must be someone across the united states who knows someone who has not been around for about two weeks who sort of looks like this character and may have mentioned they have a problem with united health care or the ceo of the company. when you start to connect those basic dots, someone i am sure would be particularly helpful in alerting the authorities like i know this person. he has not been around for a week or two. our member him saying he wanted to go beat-up the ceo of united health care. someone must know who this person is. it is a matter of finding enough people to connect those dots and point law enforcement in more productive direction. retired nypd direct -- nypd

detective. thank you for joining us with those insights. >> the family of american journalist austin tice says he is still alive after being held hostage in syria for more than 12 years citing a source of that has been thoroughly vetted by the u.s. government they say. austin tice was kidnapped at a checkpoint near damascus while reporting on the war in syria in 2012 to yes but held captive longer than any other u.s. journalist. in august u.s. president biden demanded the serious go -- the syrian government releasing. the government of a sawed has denied -- of a sawed has denied holding him. the family met white house officials in washington. the sister and niece of austin tice spoke to me earlier about how their family is. dealing with this news. . >> to receive that news has been such a boost of hope for our family. >> your uncle austin has been

gone for most of your life. what do you know about him or what have you been told about him? >> the stories we share as a family about how he was as a brother. even in the short years i knew him, we were close and i don't remember all of it but i heard the stories about him and he was amazing. he does not deserve to be left. >> you would love to see him come home. he is the only u.s. journalist currently being held captive abroad. wide -- why is it you think that successive administrations have been unable to secure his release? >> unfortunately it comes down to the fragile political relationships and austin is kind of caught in all of that. but for our family obviously, our one main goal and hope is to

get austin home and while we are here, all of us together in washington, d.c., our goal is to ask president biden to please call assad and asked for austin to come home. >> the sister and niece of austin tice speaking to me earlier. the nato foreign ministers this week held the last high level meeting of the alliance before u.s. president biden leaves office next month. they did not heed ukraine's call for a membership invitation. kyiv says it will not settle for anything less than nato membership in any future cease-fire negotiations with russia. ukraine's president says he would accept nato membership for the territory give currently holds as part of a true settlement. canada says it will increase its military and diplomatic presence in the arctic. in statement released friday the country said it plans to deploy naval destroyers, summaries, aircraft and drones the arctic

to counter what it considers threats from russia. the canadian government says it will seek deeper collaboration with nordic nations five. of which are nato members. i spoke about these issues with the canadian foreign minister a little earlier. i began by asking her about the nato foreign ministers meeting. >> what we talked about is how much we need to continue to support ukraine and how much also ukrainians need to be part of any form of discussion regarding their future. it is canada's position ukraine should become part of nato. they should receive an invitation. and we think it is in the best interest of ukrainians, of europe and also on this side of the ocean which is north america. it would make the north american and european partnership much

stronger. that is our position. we are also supportive of the recent biden administration decision regarding the use of long-range missiles by ukrainians themselves. >> which is something president zelenskyy has long been pushing for as is nato membership. was there any sense of a timeline put on that? ? that is something he really wants to know. >> in terms of the membership, we know it needs to be a decision taken by all nato members. this is a discussion happening in many capitals including of course washington where you are now. i will not answer for them but the position in ottawa where i am is we think it would be in the best interest of the transatlantic relationship and community. >> mentioning washington, was

there a discussion or is there a concern about what the change of the administration in the u.s. will mean for the conflict? >> we talked about the incoming u.s. administration and the prime minister of canada, prime minister trudeau had a productive meeting with president-elect trump recently. i have been in contact with many u.s. lawmakers. we also think having dealt with the former trump administration between 2016 and 2020, president-elect trump is arriving in his new presidency at a time when nato has been reinforced. countries are investing a lot more in defense. at a time when nato has been much more united than it was before. a lot has happened in the last few years.

geopolitics has been much tougher. we are in a tougher world and we need to have a tougher response. >> you mentioned the visit of prime minister trudeau to see donald trump last week. he has threading tariffs of 25% on canadian imports could how concerning is that to you, the people in canada? >> we always have to take that extremely seriously. we had a plan before the election and we are putting that plan into motion. we have been meeting as a u.s. canada cabinet committee many times. we have been engaging many of our contacts in the u.s. we have many tools at our disposal. as you know and as people watching us may be no is canada is the export market for 35 states in the u.s.

the trade value is more than the one of china, japan and the u.k. combined. we know it is important to have a strong trade relationship and we will continue to have one. i know you are not asking me questions about it but i also launched an important arctic strategy was also discussed at the mar-a-lago dinner amongst the president trump team and the trudeau team. >> that was my next question is on the arctic policy you launched today. how much is there an impetus for greater international cooperation on the future of the arctic particularly given the impact we have seen in climate change? >> what we are seeing now is for a long time, arctic states including u.s., nordic five, russia and canada were having

this approach of a low tension region. when russia decided to invade ukraine, of course we saw how much president putin had no redlines and also at the same time since russia has been investing a lot of resources in ukraine and it is depending even more on china and their partnership now, russia is the jr. partner to china. it is allowing china even more in the arctic fulfilling a long time aim of china which has called itself for a long time a near arctic state. we are seeing coast guard operations between both countries and ultimately we had to change our approach to the arctic which is ultimately we need to make sure we have a tougher response.

we are investing our defense, investing in our military capabilities in the arctic. we are investing more in diplomacy by being closer to the u.s. in alaska and closer to the nordic five countries. >> canada's foreign minister speaking to me earlier. rebel forces have reportedly reached syria's third-largest city homs a day after taking control of the second largest city. fighters from hts seized hama on thursday. thousands of civilians have fled homs. the rebels have vowed to march to the capital damascus. the years nations has said the fighting has displaced more than 370,000 people. our middle east is on the turkish syrian border and he joins us now.

what can you tell us? what is the latest situation? >> this has been an astonishing offensive by these rebels and tonight they are saying they have reached the city limits of homs. have made a final call on forces loyal to the government of president assad to defect. what is interesting is it is not only those fighters making progress. kurdish forces have taken control of the eastern desert after government troops abandoned their positions. being redeployed to try to defend government positions near homs and near the capital damascus. there are local insurgents is happening near the south of the country. a lot of pressure on the government. a lot of pressure on president assad should it seems without sniffing and iran, he is unable

to stop the advance of these rebels. we know any the most violent day of the cereal war, -- violent day of the syrian work tummy relied heavily on russia and iran. these areas are preoccupied with their own conflicts in their own affairs. russia is busy in ukraine. iran is reeling after a huge campaign of attacks on its proxies across the region. a very difficult for -- difficult situation for the president and many are saying this could be the beginning of the end of his regime in syria. >> thank you for bringing us up. an israeli attack on one of the last functioning hospitals in gaza has killed 29 people. four staff members at the hospital are among those killed in the raid. that is according to the hospital's director. israel's military says it was targeting hamas fighters near the hospital and said it had ordered an evacuation of the building before him.

the president spoke to me earlier about the challenges for civilians and aid workers. unicef communications specialist, thank you for joining us on bbc news. you are in rafa in the south of gaza. we are hearing of this attack by the idf on the hospital in the north. reports of four doctors did. 29 people dead. what is your understanding of conditions at the moment? >> i'm not sure we can still call it a hospital. the unicef health team visited the hospital last week at the end of november and what they encountered was gruesome. the hospital had been turned into a war zone. the neonatal icu was out of service. my colleagues could see the

impact of shelling, bullet holes in the ceiling and in the walls. there were at that time 13 patients who were mostly patients, very severe war injuries. because the hospital had been under siege and under relentless attack for over eight weeks already, it was out of supplies, out of essential medicines. there was a shortage of doctors leading unicef to medically evacuate a critically wounded 13-year-old boy. the situation is extremely grim. we are deeply concerned for any patients that are still at that hospital. hospitals must be protected. >> those children you encountered there, what is the prognosis for them? what are their options? >> the children that we found

last week, they mostly were -- for instance there was a four-year-old girl that had been pulled from underneath the rubble with a severe head injury. there was a teenage girl who had lost in i and had a head injury and a boy we ended up medically evacuating got wounded in an explosion with very severe trauma wounds. the thing is when we say gaza is not safe, people will think of bombs and bullets but the thing is when you are fortunate enough to survive an explosion or a bombing or whatever it may be, your life is still at risk because of the lack of access to health care. it lacks medical supplies, medicines, doctors. the lives of these patients are at direct risk.

baby to be medically evacuated to other hospitals in gaza or probably outside of gaza because the situation in the remaining hospitals is extremely to dire. i did a story on an 11-year-old boy with kimye last month only to find out he had died just three days later because of lack of treatment for him available inside of gaza. it is the living conditions. it is the bad sanitation condition. lack of access to health care. lack of nutritious food, inadequate shelter and it is these living conditions that put the lives of families at risk. >> when you are trying to medically evacuate those children out of gaza entirely, how difficult a process is that? >> the medical evacuation outside of gaza is not something unicef is involved in. that is taking care of by the world health organization.

it is a process that absolutely needs to be scaled up. there are thousands and thousands of people with very severe wounds with very critical diseases. lots of them are cancer patients. they are on a waiting list to get out of gaza. we estimate there are at least 2500 children who need to be medically evacuated out of gaza for urgent medical care, for lifesaving care. on top of those 2500, thousands others. amputees who definitely need medical care and rehabilitation which is not available inside gaza. >> before we go, let's take you to georgia where protests are entering a ninth night. just a warning there maybe some flashing lights from these latest images between protesters and authorities.

you can see police in the capital. police using water cannon to disperse protesters on one of the city's main streets. it looks like fireworks are being launched. reports say special forces have cleared the area surrounding parliament and have made several a restaurant protests were triggered by the governing party decision to shelve e.u. accession talks. you can keep up-to-date with the story and all of the news on our website bbc news.com. you can check us out on your favorite social media platform anytime as well. thank you for watching world news america. do take care. goodbye no. announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation.

and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ announcer: get the free pbs app now and stream the best of pbs.

♪ geoff: good evening. i am geoff bennett. on the newshour tonight, in an unprecedented move, romania's election results are thrown out because of russian interference, putting the nato member and its western allies at a