U.N. Under-Secretary Addresses Failed Gaza Cease-Fire; Cease-Fire Shattered; Tipping Russia's Hand
SCIUTTO: Welcome back. We want to get you caught up now with the latest in the Middle East. That 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire that the U.S. helped broker, it lasted less than two hours. Palestinian sources say at least 40 people were killed, more than 200 injured by Israeli shelling in southern Gaza near the Egyptian border. Hamas claims the attack, just 90 minutes into the cease-fire, was unprovoked. Israel, however, says it was retaliating after a Hamas suicide bomber infiltrated an Israeli tunnel operation and detonated. Two Israeli soldiers were killed and one, says Israel, captured during the attack. Hamas just told us a short time ago, their spokesperson from Doha, that there was no Israeli soldier captured. Osama Hamdan calling that an Israeli story. The White House, however, has called the reported attack on Israeli soldiers a, quote, "barbaric violation of the cease-fire." Secretary of State John Kerry added his voice to the condemnation of the Hamas attack on Israeli soldiers. Here's what he said. "The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today's attack which led to the killing two Israeli soldiers and the apparent abduction of another. It was an outrageous violation of the cease-fire negotiated over the past several days. Hamas must immediately and unconditionally release the missing Israeli soldier." I'm joined now by global affairs correspondent Elise Labott. Clearly the U.S. is lining up behind Israel on their explanation of what happened here. You know, you heard the Hamas spokesman deny to me -</s>ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Right.</s>SCIUTTO: That they have the soldier. The U.S. saying, listen, you have the soldier, release him, this was a violation.</s>LABOTT: Well, a violation, Jim. And you've seen over the last couple of days that the U.S. has really increased its pressure on the Israelis to stop this operation because of the overwhelming death on the Palestinian side, particularly civilian deaths. I understand Secretary Kerry was very tough on Prime Minister Netanyahu to accept this cease-fire. Now that there's been this apparent violation, now that the U.S. has clearly lined up against Israel, I think that the U.S. is not outwardly calling for restraint from the Israelis, although certainly in private conversations they're saying, listen, we can't go overboard, we need to eventually get back to a cease-fire. But in this statement, Secretary Kerry said, it would be a tragedy if this outrageous attack leads to more suffering and loss of both sides of this conflict. And so clearly the United States is bracing for a really -</s>LABOTT: Heavy handed response from the Israelis.</s>SCIUTTO: It's got to be a big ground operation. One, because they're looking for a soldier. That involves door to door searches. But also there's a retaliatory aspect to this, as always. He talks -- Secretary Kerry talked about it would be a shame if this led to, you know, losing an opportunity for</s>LABOTT: Well, he's pretty much saying there's going to be a lot of dead Palestinians on the other side.</s>SCIUTTO: No question. But he also seems to be holding out some hope there that the peace process or the cease-fire talks can continue. The Egyptians still holding out that possibility. But clearly nothing's going to happen in Cairo this weekend as planned in light of what appears to have happened here so soon into the cease-fire.</s>LABOTT: Well, clearly, there's no false optimism here. But I'm speaking to Egyptian officials. I'm speaking to U.S. officials. They are hoping that this happened, that it's horrible, but that clearly that you do need to see some kind of political resolution at the end of this. Otherwise, there's going to be so much more killing on both sides. I'm told the Egyptians are not withdrawing their invitation, saying don't come, but they're saying, listen, if you're serious, if you're committed about stopping the violence, we are not going to talk to you until we see a cease-fire on both sides. And you heard -- listen, you heard from the spokesman from Hamas, I think a willingness to try and tamp this down -</s>SCIUTTO: Yes.</s>LABOTT: Clearly saying, listen, this was unprovoked. We are not violating the cease-fire. We do want to talk.</s>SCIUTTO: Denying that they have that soldier. But in a word, if they have a soldier, can any talks continue?</s>LABOTT: I don't think so right now, but ultimately you saw what happened with Gilad Shalit, the lengths to which Israel is willing to bring back one of their own.</s>SCIUTTO: Right.</s>LABOTT: And so eventually they are going to need to talk. So I think the idea is from the Egyptians on the U.S. side, let's talk now.</s>SCIUTTO: All right. Well, let's hope for the sake of all involved. To the other international crisis we've been covering in Ukraine. A Russian soldier having some fun on Instagram might be giving away information that his commanders would have liked to keep secret. This is the guy I'm talking about here. A sergeant in the Russian army who like his own image so much that he sends a lot of selfies to friends on the Internet. And here's the problem for sergeant selfie, he may not know that these pictures also give his exact location and some of it indicates he is on the wrong side of Russia's border with Ukraine. I'm joined now by Laurie Segall, who's been looking into this. Laurie, if this is true, I think we all know that, you post anything anywhere, it's got a locator indicator in there where exactly you are. And this would seem to be some proof that Russians are operating on the Ukrainian side of the border.</s>LAURIE SEGALL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure, Jim, I mean, look, in short, it's all about geo-location (ph). Social media, we now know, offers more clues than we're aware of. This is no surprise. And these selfies were posted on Instagram while he was on duty. But the interesting thing here is Instagram has a feature called Photo Map. You're looking at it right now. Anyone can see where and when you post a picture when you have that function turned on. You can see here, he posted 32 photos on the Russian side of the border, two pictures from Ukraine. And, Jim, we get very specific location data. I'm talking we know that he posted these pictures at the end of June and early July. Now, Photo Map is known to be very accurate, although, of course, there are exceptions. You know, in this case, he might have had no idea. It could have been a combination of having that feature turned on and him being unaware that his images were automatically being geo-tagged on the iPad. Now, if you look at the selfies that appear to be posted from Ukraine, they seem pretty basic. He talks about night gatherings and sleepings. He always uses the #army. But, you know, when you look at it, being able to easily gauge that a Russian soldier, during this conflict, was posting from Ukraine is noteworthy, just given that the region is hotly contested. Obviously, there's a lot of finger-pointing going on. Jim.</s>SCIUTTO: So, have Russian officials been reacting to this, denying it?</s>SEGALL: You know, there has been a reaction. And one interesting reaction is a lawmaker has come forward and said, hey, we need to stop, have our Russian military stop posting these social media images because we are understanding more that geo-location, oftentimes when people post something as simple as a selfie, they don't realize that they're actually showing their data. One user on VK (ph), which is the Russian version of FaceBook, actually posted a warning to soldiers. He posted a picture of a photo that was since deleted by another soldier that said something like, we're digging in Ukraine, which is obviously very sensitive. He deleted that, but this other user went on to FaceBook and says -- he warned everyone. He said, do not forget to turn off geo-location when you're doing your photos. So, obviously, very sensitive during these times of conflict.</s>SCIUTTO: Well, no question. It's interesting, actually when MH17 was shot down, there was a posting on Russia social media, the equivalent of FaceBook, by a rebel commander claiming credit for shooting down what he thought was a Ukrainian military airliner, which has been cited by U.S. officials as evidence that Russia - that was behind - or that the separatists were behind that attack. Thanks very much for Laurie Segall. And thank you for watching. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington, filling in today for Ashleigh Banfield. "Wolf," live from Jerusalem again, starts right now.