A Look at Hamas Rockets; Red Cross Tours Gaza
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We are just about 34 hours into the longest cease-fire yet between Israel and Gaza. Right now, a small team from the U.S. State Department is on its way to Cairo, Egypt, acting in a supportive role as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators meet. They're using Egyptian officials as go-betweens for the negotiations. In the meantime, back in Gaza, residents are trying to negotiate a new reality, one where homes and businesses, hospitals and markets once stood, are now leveled, taken out by Israeli rockets. But in the attacks, neither side can escape blame. During the conflict, critics have slammed Hamas, claiming it used its own people as human shields, firing rockets from neighborhoods full of civilians, and now an Indian TV network seems to confirm that. Take a look at what the news crew says it saw just outside the window of their hotel.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By reasonable doubt, it's fair to guess that this is a potential Hamas rocket launching site. That this is an area very heavily built up. A lot of residential and hotel, buildings all around. Sort of a bush on top of whatever they've buried under the sand.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So that's the rocket being fired today, morning (ph), a day after it was assembled in the exact spot. The rocket is being fired, that's the smoke, we just showed a video of it in the immediate aftermath.</s>COSTELLO: So let's talk about this. I want to bring in CNN military analyst Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona. Hi.</s>LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Hi. Good morning.</s>COSTELLO: It looks so rinky dink to me.</s>FRANCONA: Yes, this particular one is. It's a smaller rocket. Probably one of the homemade ones. You can launch it from any kind of a tube. You could use a car battery to ignite them. It's really quite simple, quite ingenious. And they'll go maybe 10 miles. This is not the rocket -- these are not the rockets that are a big threat to the Israelis.</s>COSTELLO: Well, let's talk about this kind of rocket for just a moment because it's so strange. So they're in the middle of a street and there's a little blue tarp and they're covering the rocket paraphernalia with branches and trees.</s>FRANCONA: Yes. And once they launch this, the Israelis will detect it because they have almost 24-hour coverage of the entire Gaza Strip. It's not that big. They've got these blimp-born cameras and sensors, plus all the drones, so they can see what's going on. And as they detect the rocket going up, they can immediately bring weapons to bear on these launch sites. The problem is, as you see there, this is in the middle of a crowded street right beside probably a school, a mosque, a hospital, something like that. So the Israelis are faced with a dilemma. Do they let it go or do they try and make a precision strike on that. And, of course, precision isn't always precise</s>COSTELLO: True. And we've seen that sadly many times. The other interesting factor is, once these guys fired off their rocket, they changed their clothes so that they could blend in -</s>FRANCONA: Yes.</s>COSTELLO: With the neighborhood.</s>FRANCONA: Yes. This is called shoot and scoot. This is a -- every military does this. Once you fire your weapon, you want to get out of there because they know what's coming next. And you -- like when you fire mortars or artillery, the other guy, whoever you're firing it at, generally has what's called a fire finder radar. He knows the incoming rounds are coming. He knows where they're from. So you fire an outgoing round. The Israelis are very good at that as well. And I think that's what we saw in some of these U.N. facilities, they were taking mortar rounds and they were sending mortar rounds back and not -- the guys down there at the trenches don't always know what's on the other side of that trajectory</s>COSTELLO: So these rockets don't have a massive range, right? So is it possible they would like fall within Gaza and harm Gaza's people?</s>FRANCONA: The Israelis estimate about 10 percent of the -- particularly the homemade, the al Qassam rockets that they fire, fall short. They misfire. I mean they're crudely made. When I was last in Gaza, I saw some of these rockets and what they'll do is they will take down sign pipes and make rockets out of them. Anything that's - anything that's cylindrical, made out of metal, they'll make a rocket out of it. So they're going to be very crude. They'll go two, three, four, five, six miles. All they do is need to get them to an Israeli town.</s>COSTELLO: Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, thanks so much. Those rocket attacks we were just discussing have been coming from both sides, but the numbers, as well as the damage, well, they don't appear equal anyway. Israel's Defense Forces say more than 3,000 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel. In the meantime, United Nation agency officials counter that number, saying that more than 20,000 missiles and shells have been fired from Israel into Gaza. And, of course, that's left parts of Gaza absolutely devastated. Hospitals bombed, markets left in ruins. Nearly half a million people forced out of their homes. So let's talk about this. We're joined by Cecilia Goin. She is the spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Celia, welcome back.</s>CECILIA GOIN, INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS: Thank you so much.</s>COSTELLO: Have you had a chance to walk around Gaza?</s>GOIN: Well, I spent the week in Gaza two weeks ago, but -- so now I'm in Jerusalem. But we have, of course, our teams of people. The president of International Committee of the Red Cross, Mr. Peter Mauer (ph), yesterday spent the whole day in Gaza. He had the chance to go to different neighborhoods to be able to talk to people in the hospitals, not only with doctors, nurses, but also the people who are there, the wounded, the children. He managed also to go to difficult areas where in the past days it was impossible to go because of the ongoing fighting. He's (ph) particularly devastated because of the impact of these armed conflict. I mean as you rightly side, there are over 450,000 people who are displaced or the majority are living with friends or relatives. But over most of 200,000 people, they are staying in shelters, such as the U.N. schools, or other public buildings. And there are many, many people who are living, they are homeless. So the numbers that 50,000 people they don't have home anymore, so there's a huge impact in the infrastructure. You know that the only power plant in Gaza was completely damaged. It will take a year or more to repair. So the problem is that the majority of the population that we are talking about, 1.8 million people there, directly affected by water shortages or electricity cuts. So it's a huge problem right now in Gaza.</s>COSTELLO: Are there enough supplies to help?</s>GOIN: Well, in terms of drugs and disposal materials, the Red Cross, jointly with the Red Crescent, which is our brother organization, we are supporting the work done by the hospitals, particularly the Shifah (ph) Hospital, which is the main Rafah hospital in Gaza. We have teams of surgeons, nurses. We are trying to support as much as we can. A couple of days ago we were able to bring inside Gaza 3,000 units of blood from the ministry of health in Ramallah. So that was a huge help because, you know, the number of people we have 10,000 people who were wounded. Just to give you a picture of what this armed conflict means, a couple of days ago after heavy fighting that took place in the south of the strip, in 20 minutes, 160 wounded people arrived at Shifah Hospital. Just imagine the picture. Most of the patients they were on the floor. The nurses, the doctors working around the clock. It was really, really hectic, but they managed to be able to provide first aid assistance to all of them. So, really, the health system is working under a lot of pressure. We are trying to do as much as we can given the circumstance. The people, they went outside their houses. It's one day without bombs inside Gaza. So that's quite important. But nevertheless, they are afraid. No one knows what's going to happen when (ph) this cease-fire ends in two days.</s>COSTELLO: Cecelia Goin from the International Red Cross, thank you so much. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, he was held captive by the Taliban for five years. Today, Bowe Bergdahl faces Army investigators. Nick Valencia is following it all in San Antonio. Hi, Nick.</s>NICK VALENCIA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. I'm Nick Valencia, just outside of Ft. Sam Houston here in San Antonio, where U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl will be questioned by a Pentagon investigator. I'll have all the details after the break. You're watching CNN.