joining us from iraq is bill neely. bill, the humanitarian crisis is exploding there in the region. >> reporter: yeah, francis, the latest figures from the u.n. are that 70,000 people have now fled remember, they said 60,000 had fled in the first day alone. we're now on day three there is heavy fighting so i think you can expect that to continue as you say, distressing scenes in hospitals i saw one image of a girl who had lost her leg, her 12-year-old brother had been killed so civilians are certainly suffering. the latest figures from the turkish defense ministry are that they say they've killed 228 militants and the fds kurdish alliance say they have lost up to 30 fighters so heavy fighting. turkish jets in action up to 18 miles into what president erdogan is hoping will be a safe zone so he is winning ground, but diplomatically he's not winning friends. the u.n. actually failed to pass any kind of resolution censuring this attack. but the u.s. is increasily indicating that it has red lines. red lines that would includ

nbc's chief global correspondent bill neely is on the ground, in the kurdish capitol. first of all, bill, how critical is the situation in northern syria? >> reporter: craig, it's critical, it's fluid, it's dangerous. the immediate risks are a clash between syrian government forces who've moved in, and turkish government forces. in other words, a clash between the two countries. there could also be the risk of warplanes from syria's ally russia, in a clash with turkish warplanes. and also the possibility that yie isis prisoners could be released in this chaos. the speed of developments in the last 24, never mind 48 hours, staggering. here are some examples. u.s. troops are leaving, just a few days ago, they were with kurdish troop, those kurdish troops will now be absorbed into syria's fifth corps, and that's under russian control. so russia will literally be moving in to the space vacated by u.s. troops. secondly, the u.s. counterterrorism operation, not part of syria, is in absolute shreds. thirdly, president assad has made more ground in the last day than he has in t

bill neely from nbc news >>> breaking news just hitting the wire around renault. the board has voted in favor of ousting bollore as ceo there was a report that the chairman wanted to replace the ceo. thierry bollore talked about this attempt to replace him as a coupe. they say the board has voted in favor of replacing him he came this role after the carl carl carl carlos saga last year. >> picking up from our colleague bill neely what is president erdogan trying to achieve >> doe domestically, there is a last of advantage. a lot there will look fairly favorable. supporting the pkk, the kurdish group. they see the political presence as a threat to turkey security >> where is bash aall of this? the kurdish groups in the northern part of the country what does turkish incursion mean >> it weakens defensives in saria. assad still intends to assert control overall of syria this means there is potential to move on kurdish positions. we have no indications of this as of yet. >> you think it emboldens presidehim? >> it could. we haven't seen anything yet >> president trump

bill neely, nbc news >>> tonight with the school year in full swing, teachers are sounding the alarm about a method more and more schools are using to deal with out-of-control students it was first reported by our affiliate in des moines and also portland, and it's known as room clear. nbc's kate snow found it can have destructive results. >> reporter: the videos are shocking, classrooms torn apart, desks and tables upended. >> i've had my things thrown around the room, ripped off the walls. i've been punched, kicked, stabbed with a pencil >> reporter: how common is that >> pretty common. >> reporter: ashley may quit her teaching job in des moines at the end of last school year, frustrated and frankly scared by some of her students. >> he would body check me and grab me by my whistle and yank me down and then i had another student who pulled back and just threw a punch at me. >> reporter: these kids are how old >> 7 >> reporter: like other teachers who took these photos, may would call for a room clear, a practice used when a student gets out of control, leave the disruptive child in

bill neely, nbc news, london. >>> back here at home in san mateo, the sheriff's office and i.c.e., the immigration customs and enforcement will face pressure from immigrant rights supporters. protesters plan to oppose the transferring of undocumented immigrants in custody over to i.c.e. sheriff's office representatives are scheduled to attend this afternoon's meeting to answer questions. >>> the battle over school closures in oakland may heat up again later today. angry parents and teachers vowing to show up at today's school board meeting. already this week opponents shut down a meeting involving education leaders and city council measures and angry about a plan to close two schools and fear more may be on the chopping block. they cite lower enrollment and budget deficit. the meeting is at 5:30 tonight. >>> sanford leaders cut the ribbon on a new state-of-the-art medical facility, rising seven stories and covered 824,000 square feet. it also includes 368 patient rooms, 20 operating rooms and an emergency room twice the size of the old one. it is also a lot more seismically safe than t

>> bill neely, thank you, bill. >>> now to new developments from central hong kong and hundreds of massested in anti-government tdemonstrations and to protest recent police brutality. let's go to nbc's kelly cobiella and these protests are spilling into politics and pop culture. what's going on? >> reporter: that's right, and the most high profile example i guess is the nba, we've been talking about it all week long, the fact that the nba has been caught up in this conflict, between supporting free speech, and actually supporting its business interests which is massive in china. there were more protests today. in the meantime, just across the border, not far from here, in shenzen china, an exhibition game for the nba is about to tip off, in just about a half an hour. there have been calls for boycotts of this game in china. it is essentially blacked out in that country. chinese state media refusing to show it. it is not being shown online. and that's because of this tweet by houston rockets general manager darryl morey a week ago yesterday voicing support for the hong kong protesters, t

bill neely and leanne.ant to share what lindsey graham tweeted. >> we'll introduce bipartisan sanctions against turkey if they invade syria and they'll call for their suspension for nato if they attack kurdish forces insisted the u.s. in the destruction of the isis caliphate. if necessary would be veto proof. how should we take this? >> lindsey graham is not happy about this. he's been on a tweet storm all day long. in one of his tweets, he called this a disaster in the making and republicans are pretty united. we heard from ben sass and susan collins and also from the house, liz cheney and she called this catastrophic mistake if the president moves forward with this. the only person who's standing with the president is senate errand paor rand paul. >> her e is what he tweeted today. he wants to have a america's first policy. republicans have been uncomfortable with the president's foreign policy. steph, this makes them really nervous. >> bill, the president's series of tweets there. as it relates to isis f

>> bill neely, thank you so much for that update. coming live to us. let's bring in jack jacobs. tary analyst and contribut contributor. you heard what bill and keir said. what is your assessment of today's developments? >> what you expect to happen. the turks have two objectives here. the first is to clear the area of kurds. our allies and getting rid of isis. second, to take all the syrian refugees they currently have inside turkey and put them in syria and get them out of turkey altogether. so far they're being successful. i don't think they're going to stop until they're convinced that they've got the buffer zone that they need. that all the syrian refugees are out of turkey. then, of course, they have to defend a wider border. they're ready to do that as long as it keeps syrian refugees out of turkey and it keeps the kurds out of turkey as well. don't forget that the kurds are, as far as turkey is concerned, they're terrorists and they're looking to eliminate them altogether. >> yesterday we reported that they were force today retreat. u.s. officials believe it was a delibera

joining me now is nbc news chief global correspondent bill neely, live from erbil in iraq. >> hi, joy. you joined me in a bit of a storm, but the real storm, of course, is on the battlefield and diplomatically. we've got street-to-street fighting now on day four of this invasion of turkish forces have pushed into one of the border towns, and they're trying to do what armies always do. speed is their best ally. they do not want the kurds to dig in. they want to get to this 20-mile limit as fast as possible because there's an international outcry, and that increased today. the u.s. warning the turks that their relations with turkey are at real risk. the defense secretary mark esper telling his counterpart to basically de-escalate before this gets completely out of control. treasury secretary steve mnuchin threatening that we can shut down turkey's economy. the arab league condemning what they call the invasion of an arab land, and so on. big calls also from europe to stop this, but president erdogan absolutely defiant, saying we will not stop for anyone, and his spokesman sayi

bill neely, thank you. graham wood is a staff writer at the atlantic and author of the wa way of the strangers. >>> conflict and confusion continue in syria and the president is escalating his rhetoric over impeachment and rejecting congress' plooimpeach inquiry. this morning he took more baseless swipes at the whistleblower's credibility claiming the whistleblower's facts have been so incorrect, and he referenced again a conflict of interest and involvement with a democrat candidate that he or she should be exposed and questioned properly. today's torrent of twitter attacks is less than 24 hours after the white house sent an 8 page liter to leaders refusing to comply with what they call a, quote, partisan and unconstitutional inquiry. now, among several criticisms, the letter says that you have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process. put simply, you seek to overturn the results of the 2016 election and deprive the ameri

. >> that was a report from nbc correspondent bill neely right at the time this happened. we also got publicly released at the time, just a sort of an amazing video from what i think appears to be maybe the bridge of one of the russian ships that was involved. it was a video that was shot as this thing was happening. >> this happened just a little less than a year ago, sunday november, 25, last year, 2018. what happened here is that a russian ship rammed into a ukrainian tug, then the russians opened fire on that tug that they just rammed, and they opened fire on two other ukrainian ships. the russians then sent commandos onboard the ukrainian ships they had just rammed and shot at, and they took the crew members off those ships. they took two dozen ukrainian sailors as their prisoners. some of the ukrainians were hurt but they took them as prisoners. you saw bill neely spell this out the night it happened. on this map it's pretty obvious. on the right side of your screen that's the western part of russia. left part that's the south eastern part of ukraine. at the bottom o

joining me now is bill neely live in irbil, iraq. bill, in the most recent development that kurdish forces are asking or seeking help and protection from the syrian government in damascus backed by russia. walk us through the significance of that development and why it's such a departure. >> the developments over the last 24 hours are stunning. just think two days ago kurdish fighters were still in the field with american special forces. now under the agreement with damascus, they are being merged into the syrian fifth corps under russian control. so the russians are literally moving into the space vacated by the americans. the american counterterroism operation in northern syria is now no more. president assad has made more campaigns in one day than he has made in the last three years. just within the last hour i've been getting reports that his troops are in one regional city and the russians really have now -- they're the power brokers, if you'd like, in this area. because the united states has lost leverage and lost influence. qui

nbc news chief global correspondent bill neely joining us from neighboring iraq.s the strikes continue, what i front and what is happening on the of this offensive, but not the end of the fighting. heavy fighting reported all day, especially around two times just across the border, across the turkish/syrian border. they've updated casualty figures. it now says 342, what it calls militants, kurdish fighters being killed. the kurdss saying a couple dozen killed. about a dozen civilian casualties, one turkish soldier. the u.n. says several thousand people are fleeing. that number will be updated in the next few hours. clearly a humanitarian crisis. the first few days are critical, ayman, as you know from covering wars yourself. the turks are hoping to push forward before the krurds can dig in and stop their momentum. the turks want to make as much ground as possible before there's an international backlash. we've seen the first signs of that. trsly in istanbul today, general stoltenberg made the foreign minister. turkey, the member of nato. the foreign minister said

trapping people below the dramatic video capturing the moment it all came crashing down here's nbc's bill neely. >> reporter: caught oncamera, c collapse in northeast taiwan a towering bridge plunging into a bay, crushing fishing boats below. an oil tanker into w miraculously, the driver survived. three fishing boats were smashed by tons of concrete. ten people rescued, several badly injured. but six fishermen are missing. divers searching the debris for signs of life in oily waters. the 20-year-old bridge snapped cleanly at each end why isn't known, but yesterday, the port was hit by typhoon winds of 100 miles an hour a tragedy for a small fishing village where now as dre >>> tonight with the school year in full swing, teachers are sounding the alarm about a method more and more schools are using d out-of-control students it was first reported by our affiliate in des moines and also portland, and it's known as room clear. nbc's kate snow found it can have destructive results. >> reporter: the videos are shocking, classrooms torn apart, desks and tables upended. >> i've had my things thrown aro

you saw bill neely spell this out the night it happened. on this map it's pretty obvious. on the right side of your screen that's the western part of russia. left part that's the south eastern part of ukraine. at the bottom of your screen below the other part of ukraine, that's called crimea. you can see the black sea there. but in between russia and the part of ukraine that is called crimea, you can see there's this tiny narrow little strait, which is called the kurch strait. north of there is a different body of water, that's the northern extension of the black sea. and once upon a time the sea of asof was a relatively normal thing. but 5 1/2 years ago russia invaded ukraine and they took a whole big chunk of the nation of ukrainian. they took crimea for themselves. they decided that crimea was now part of russia. and after they did that, after they took crimea to sort of solidify their hold on ukraine, russia built a big weird expensive bridge across the strait, a bridge that connects russia to crimea, to this part of ukraine that russia is now claiming as its own. and

bill neely swroeupbs us now. syria. bill neely, can you hear me? we will try to get back to him in just a bit. we'll go back to the tweet. it is so astonishing. he elected to remove the u.s. troops from this border knowing full well what the ramifications would be. there weren't a lot there. but the symbolism was huge. we have seen what we have seen the last few days and we are seeing now. the president saying we are watching this happen and issuing these warnings to turkey. they shouldn't be doing this. threatening sanctions. the most predictable crisis we could have seen. >> it is not even a warning. it is a vague promise that should atrocities that he can't even articulate that he will hurt them economically, that he been able to do in other world circumstances. he lit the patch, pushed over the ke and saying isn't it involved we don't have to be involved in firefighting. the culpability is so clear. i don't understand if the only theory is i'm here to help the base, how does any average american who wants a jo

. >> nbc news chief global correspondent bill neely, bill, thank you very much for that report. >> thankll. >>> president trump's former top aide on russia and europe is set to go before congress where she is expected to give revealing testimony, on rudy giuliani, and european union ambassador gordon sondland. nbc news has learned from a person familiar on the matter that fiona hill is expected to appear on capitol hill monday, and is expected to tell lawmakers that giuliani and sondland bypassed the national security council, and the normal white house process, for communicating with trump, on ukraine issues, in a bid to pursue a shadow policy on the matter. that source says it included circumventing national security adviser john bolton. a senior white house official tells nbc, that fears are, stokes fears close to the president due to the pivotal role on ukraine policy and it presents a major test of the committees with impeachment inquiry over whether they can get testimony from other former administration officials who have left given the possibility that the white house may try to

nbc's chief global correspondent bill neely joins us with the breaking news on this story good morning. >> reporter: good morning, a horrifying discovery and a tragic story it began early this morning when k parked in an industrial ed to area about an hour east of london when they opened the back of this truck, they found 39 bodies inside, 38 adults and one teen no one else in there was alive as you can see from these pictures, it's a large, unmarked container. police say it was from eastern europe, from bulgaria, but it entered britain 300 miles away on the west coast, almost certainly after traveling from ireland. the 25-year-old truck driver, a man from northern ireland has been arrested on suspicion of murder the police are still trying to identify the dead but all the evidence would suggest that these were migrants. in a similar case four years ago, 71 migrants were found suffocated in a truck in austria and this summer, waves of migrants have been trying to get into britain in small boats. people smuggling in the middle east and afghanistan is big business in europe this truck dr

bill neely is there, nbc's chief global correspondent, on a dark and windy night. ely involved in this conflict, but that does not appear that they are out of danger. >> reporter: no, alex, you're absolutely right. and yes, you do join us in the middle of a storm, but the real storm is on the battlefield. and as you say, u.s. troops are not out of it, and it brought a warning today from the u.s. defense secretary, mark esper, to turkey to de-escalate this invasion before, as he put it, the situation becomes irreparable. now, it's not clear who exactly fired towards those u.s. troops, alex. a lot of the troops on the ground are actually syrian rebels under turkish demand, but the turks have most of the artillery, and that it does look like it was an artillery or a mortar strike. so, yes, president trump withdrew special forces from the actual borderline, but there are still u.s. troops in that area, and of course, about 1,000 u.s. troops in syria overall. meanwhile, today, more fierce fighting on day four. it's now street to street. in one town, the death toll clearl

bill neely is in london. walk us through what we can expect in the next 48 hours. as i understand, we're hearing more now from the turkish president about u.s. force movement. >> reporter: as we speak, it appears that u.s. special forces troops are pulling out of observation posts in northeast syria. without question, this is a betrayal, and what it could be is a blood bath and a new phase in this dirty war. it all depends on whether turkey treats this as a full-scale invasion or something more limited. let's say an in kurgz of, say, 20 miles or so. u.s. officials seem to have little or no idea what the imminent turkish offensive will look like. either way, the kurds are not going to lay down their weapons and run. remember, these are mortal enemies. it was only the 1,000 or so u.s. troops in that area that prevented the turks moving in and trying to kill the kurds that they regard as terrorists. and of course the kurds have been america's strongest ally in the fight against isis in that region. but look, whatever happens, there's no doubt the kurds are furious, th

bill neely in erbil, the capital of afghanistan.are we learning about the withdrawal of troops? >> reporter: fast-moving developments. it appears from multiple reports that u.s. troops are already on the move. this announcement from defense secretary mark esper was something of a surprise. he said the president made the decision last night. it was because it would appear the u.s., it was in some way misled by one ally, turkey, which now says it's likely to move further south and further west than it had originally said. and the other former ally of the u.s., the kurds, have now reached out to russia and to damascus. and, indeed, there are reports coming from damascus that syrian troops are likely to move into the kobani and manbij areas within the next 48 hours. that is obviously a huge boost for president assad. he hasn't been around the kobani area for years. it's obviously, of course, a huge boost, all of this, for president putin. this is a gift to russia. president putin is getting exactly what he always wanted. he's getting sy