Deaths from Attack on Syrian Evacuation Buses
VANIER: Welcome back, everyone. I'm Cyril Vanier in Atlanta.</s>WATSON: And I'm Ivan Watson in Hong Kong. A recap now of the breaking news that we're following out of North Korea. A missile launch from the country's east coast has failed. The U.S. says it blew up shortly after takeoff. Meanwhile U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has arrived in Seoul. He's been briefed on the situation and he's set to meet with U.S. and South Korean troops.</s>VANIER: A short time ago I spoke to foreign policy analyst Robin Wright, she's a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and The Woodrow Wilson International Center. I asked her what Washington needs to do next in order to deal with Pyongyang.</s>ROBIN WRIGHT, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER: At this juncture, the United States really has to deal increasingly --</s>WRIGHT: -- with China as the interlocutor with the North Koreans. President Trump has repeatedly said that the Chinese are the ones who need to take the critical steps. He's tweeted that he's had great confidence that President Xi, after their talks in Mar-a-lago, was beginning to take the right steps. He pointed out again in a tweet that the Chinese had turned back a fleet of coal ships from North Korea. But this clearly is not enough to change the thinking, the dynamics in North Korea and we have clearly not seen the last test by the North Koreans, arguably even the next few days.</s>VANIER: So it looks like everybody agrees that the only leverage here could come from China. But China doesn't seem to be really using it. And yet it has -- it's facing a U.S. president, who has said, use your leverage or we will go it alone. So what more can the U.S. president say to China for them to use their leverage? If anything?</s>WRIGHT: I'm not sure that the United States has that much more leverage. This is a tough decision for Beijing. It has to balance its fears of a unified Korean Peninsula that's more friendly with United States against its own leverage, its own relationship with Pyongyang. And so it has to figure out a way that its interests are preserved and that it doesn't lose that important strategic asset on its border. But what more will it be willing to do? This is very interesting that, just days after the meeting between President Xi and President Trump, the Chinese released their trade figures with North Korea that showed that they were up 40 percent this year over last year at the same time. So you know, it's tough, seeing what Washington's leverage is. It's always been the key problem. It relies on China. And what incentive there is for China to do a whole lot more, I think the unpredictability of President Trump may have led to some deeper thinking in Beijing. But clearly not enough to make a difference in Kim Jong-un's thinking right now.</s>VANIER: All right, let's turn to other world news now. As they were on their way to safety, at least 100 people were killed. That happened near Aleppo, Syria's second largest city. A blast targeted buses evacuating Shiite villages, who backed President Bashar al-Assad. That was under a deal that also allowed the relocation of rebel supporters from other besieged areas. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has the latest on this.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Dozens of bodies recovered from this scene, absolute carnage, pictures posted on social media, Syrian state television, very hard to see, frankly. People torn apart in their seats on these buses. They had hoped perhaps this was a journey on the way to a moment of respite. I'll give you a context as to why these evacuation buses were quite so important. The ones attacked were leaving two towns north of Syria, Foua and Kefraya. Now these are full of regime sympathizers but were in a rebel-held province of Idlib and besieged, had been for months, years. Also in the south of the country were towns full of rebel sympathizers, Madaya and Zabadani. But they were besieged by the regime. So the U.N. brokered a kind of swap, if you like, allowing a simultaneous evacuation of these two towns that were regime-loyal in the north, Foua, Kefraya, while rebel sympathizing towns in the south, Zabadani and Madaya, were also being evacuated. But it was those who were leaving Foua and Kefraya, the regime-loyal town, that came under attack today. We don't know precisely whose territory they were in when this blast hit. But we think it was a car bomb and it does appear to be that the evacuation still continued after this tragic, horrifying episode. In the past, buses from Foua and Kefraya headed there have come under attack from people who clearly were extremists. It wasn't quite clear which group they were affiliated with but nothing like the scale of the devastation today. This, of course, has many worried in rebel sympathizing areas of some sort of regime reprisal as a result of it but still eyes focused very much on the terrifying toll on civilians in those buses. As I say, dozens of people of the 3,000 who were leaving Foua and Kefraya, losing their life from this car bomb as they felt they were on their way to safety. These towns had suffered from besieging, starvation, lack of medical supplies for months. These swaps, some say, will alleviate that suffering but, at the same time, do potentially change the demographic ethnic map of Syria permanently, taking regime sympathizers away from rebel areas entirely, they're often here with rebel areas often Sunni, Syria still seeing absolute savagery on both sides now as this war limps into its seventh year -- Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Irbil --</s>WALSH: -- Northern Iraq.</s>WATSON: Let's take a look at Turkey now, where the polls are open in a referendum on constitutional changes that could produce a seismic shift in the way the country is governed. We're going to go to our Ian Lee, who is now in Istanbul. Ian, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been either prime minister or president of the country ever since 2002, he's arguably the most powerful leader Turkey has seen since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic. So what is the argument that his supporters use for trying to further expand Erdogan's powers now with this referendum?</s>IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ivan, a lot of the things that we've been hearing about really revolve around the economy. That's one thing that Turkey has seen really revived over the past decade, becoming one of the top 20 economies in the world. People are seeing their standards of living rising. Parts of the country that have been connected to the main cities, seeing new infrastructure. So that's one thing that we've seen over the past 10 years. And today's referendum is quite historic. There are 18 new changes proposed to the constitution. It comes down to a simple yes-and-no vote for the Turks. Polls have been open for about two hours now. They're going to be open for about seven more. And, really, we will see a -- this fundamental -- what this constitutional referendum is calling for is of that fundamental shift, going from a parliamentary system, shifting towards a presidential system.</s>WATSON: All right. That's Ian Lee, live from Istanbul, watching this historic referendum with vast potential changes for the Turkish constitution. Thank you, Ian. Now I'm going to pass on to Cyril, who is at our CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Go ahead. Cyril.</s>WATSON: I was just admiring Ian's haircut. You know, he went to that same barber that President Erdogan goes to. We saw that report yesterday. Looking good. All right. Stay with us on the show. Still ahead after the break, our breaking news coverage of North Korea's failed missile test continues. CNN's Will Ripley is one of the few Western journalists inside the country. He'll be joining us from Pyongyang after this.</s>WATSON: Plus how residents of South Korea feel about the growing threat from their neighbor to the north. Stay with CNN.