40 Killed In Fire In Odessa; UAE Working To Curb Spread of MERS Virus
JIM CLANCY, HOST: City under siege: there is no letup in Odessa after a bloody weekend of the crisis in Ukraine. We're going to bring you the view from both sides. Also, uniting for Nigeria's stolen children, protests around the world urging political action to bring more than 200 schoolgirls to safety. And may the fourth be with you. We mark Star Wars day with a search for the set of the latest film in the franchise deep, deep in the Arabian desert.</s>ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center, this is Connect the World.</s>CLANCY: We begin our report with a tense situation in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. Hundreds of pro-Russian demonstrators attack the police headquarters there. They were able to convince police to release fellow separatists who were detained there after Friday's unrest. Here is the latest in the crisis. The prime minister traveling to Odessa, blaming security forces for the violence, but also accusing pro-Russia demonstrators of provoking it. On Friday, some 46 pro-Russian protesters who had locked themselves into a trade union building died in a fire. Meantime, it's beginning to look more and more like a civil war in some place with Ukrainian military forces continuing to clash with pro-Russian separatists across the east. We're covering these developments from all angles. Nick Paton Walsh reporting from near Slovyansk and Matthew Chance joining us from Moscow with the latest reaction from the Kremlin. Let's begin with Nick. Nick, the situation in Odessa, how much can you tell us about what has happened today?</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, a team of ours on the ground there is saying that protesters approached that building where there have been people involved in the violence that led to deaths on Friday detained, attacked the building, windows smashed, and eventually some of them made their way inside. Now in that tense standoff that ensued, a negotiations led to the release of potentially dozens of detainees who were held inside that building. No violence, no shots fired, no injuries as far as our team on the ground can see, but now the people who had been detained because of the clashes on Friday that eventually lead to 40 people being killed and the burning down of a trade union building in Odessa, the largest death toll since the violence in central Kiev that killed over 80 people on Maidan Square. We're now seeing the police who had just been criticized hours ago by the Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk effectively leaving the way open for these protesters to release the detainees, and in some ways, some may say, facilitating that particular departure. The big question in all of this violence now in Odessa, which has a pro- Russian population, but also, too, as you saw on Friday a strong pro- Ukrainian population too. The question now is where are the security forces? The prime minister blamed them for the failure to intervene. There will be questions asked now as to quite where they will fall as this violence continues. But this has been so distant now, the west from where I'm standing in the east. Odessa on the far distance other side of the country, thought to be immune almost in some ways to the violence raging around, but proving itself in the last 24, 48 hours to be just as volatile. And we're seeing still in the east where I'm standing around Slovyansk continuing Ukrainian military maneuvers. Volatile here as well -- Jim.</s>CLANCY: Right where you are. I want to bring in Matthew Chance. Matthew, some would say that President Vladimir Putin by deploying troops along the border with Ukraine by vowing he would protect pro-Russian residents inside Ukraine has really destabilized the situation, and some would wonder if at this point it may force his hand.</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, well some would go further than that as well by saying -- and they have done in fact inside Ukraine -- by saying that it's Russian special services. And it's the prime minister Yatsenyuk in Ukraine, he's been saying this, Russian special services are the ones that have been essentially fomenting the violence and organizing the pro-Russian supporters in those volatile areas of eastern Ukraine. But, yes, you're right. It certainly is sort of added oil to the flames, if you like, the fact that 40,000 or so Russian troops have been stationed and mobilized on the other side of the Ukrainian border in western Ukraine. Russia has said time and again that it reserves the right to protect the interests of ethnic Russians and Russian language speakers anywhere in Ukraine. And of course this Ukrainian military operation was always laden with risk that it could provoke some kind of Russian military response. There's been no such direct military response so far, but the Kremlin says it's been receiving thousands of requests from assistance from citizens of southern and eastern Ukraine, so it's sort of building up the emotional groundwork, if you like, that may lay the way for a future military intervention. But at the moment, they appear to be weighing their options. They say they're looking at this situation. They haven't decided what their response will be -- Jim.</s>CLANCY: All right, back over to -- let's cross back over to Nick Paton Walsh outside Slovyansk. And I want to ask you Nick, you have seen the security deployment, if we can call it that, there in the east. Is it really successful? Is it trying to stand back rather than to engage with a lot of the separatists?</s>WALSH: It's very hard to divine quite what the strategy is here in many ways. We saw yesterday in the town on Kramatorsk how the Ukrainian army 10 APCs, armored personnel carriers moved towards the barricade, shot it up it seems, or got in an exchange of fire somehow, moved off further into the town and the interior minister claimed they got control of key buildings. Well, that wasn't true where we went. Certainly the city hall is still controlled by pro-Russian militants. Today, I've learned from one protester who was manning a checkpoint further down the main highway that the Ukrainian military has advanced down that. And as of Friday night, moved one further checkpoint down. That gives them pretty good access running into central Slovyansk. But it does appear that when they try and take up more permanent positions near populated areas, they get an awful lot of local hostility and potentially they may find it hard to maintain those positions. I mean, you've got to bear in mind, this is an army with very little experience in warfare at all, badly funded, some of them may have fought in the Soviet era, some may have fought potentially even with the Russian army as well in Russia's campaigns. But here, no counterinsurgency experience at all and facing people in many times simply locals civilians with a grievance. Of course, they say they're being fired at, too. And we heard a lot of reports of gunfire at instance, in the outskirts of Slovyansk on Friday night, which caused the deaths of two Ukrainian paratroops. But it's an extraordinarily difficult situation even for a well trained, well equipped, well prepared army, let alone for this Ukrainian military which has struggled for the last two weeks to put anything like a convincing force on the ground here, Jim.</s>CLANCY: Back over to Matthew. Matthew, as you say, Russia, the Kremlin must weigh the options that face it right now. What has been the reaction this week to these sanctions and the risk of that being increased?</s>CHANCE: You know, publicly I don't think sanctions are being regarded very seriously here. In fact, the sanctions that have been implemented so far have been regarded pretty much as pinpricks. They've targeted people sort of on the ground associated with the separatism, certainly from the point of view from the European Union. The United states has been a little stronger in targeting Vladimir Putin's inner circle and some key corporations like the head of Rosneft, the Russian oil monopoly, but nothing to really inflict the kind of pain on Russia's economy, or on Russia or Putin's inner circle that would perhaps give Vladimir Putin pause for acting further. It's that next level, that next tier of sanctions that I think the Russians really want to avoid, the sectoral sanctions, as they're called, potentially on valuable areas like Russia's oil business, like its gas businesses, other energy supplies as well. That may be the real deterrent that will prevent Russia from going into eastern Ukraine if, indeed, that is its plan. But on the other hand, of course who knows what's doing on, what the machinations are inside the Kremlin at the moment. Perhaps they're deciding that even though sanctions are not enough to deter them for their ultimate objective, Jim.</s>CLANCY: All right, Matthew Chance reporting there live from Moscow. And our own Nick Paton Walsh reporting from near Slovyansk. Gentlemen, I want to thank you both for being with us. All right, let's turn our attention to the Middle East where Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, an illness that has sickened hundreds of people in Saudi Arabia, has made its way now to the United States. U.S. health officials say an Indiana health care worker who recently returned from Saudi Arabia was diagnosed with a virus known as MERS. The vast majority of cases have been found on the Arabian peninsula. CNN's Leone Lakhani talked to some people there about how concerned they are.</s>LEONE LAKHANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A leisurely afternoon in Dubai, the picture of rest and relaxation. On the beaches here, there's seemingly little worry about the threat of a deadly virus.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not at all. As you see, the beach like everyone. It's always like this, full, so...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not worried, because I don't see a lot of people like around me that -- so, yeah, no. I'm not worried.</s>LAKHANI: But there is reason for concern. With the steep rise in cases of the coronavirus known as MERS cough. In the past month, the number of worldwide cases has jumped by 30 percent, including nearly two dozen reported here. Authorities say there's no need for panic, but they are looking into why there's been a sudden surge. The virus comes from the same group as the common cold and attacks the respiratory system. Symptoms can include fever, cough, shortness of breath. But authorities say it's still not clear exactly how it spread.</s>HUSSAIN AL RAND, ASST. UNDERSECRETARY FOR UAE HEALTH CENTERS & CLINICS: That could be the infection reached through the droplet. If you sneeze or your cough, you don't protect your sneezing or cough, the droplet might reach the people, but it is not airborne.</s>LAKHANI: It's still a theory.</s>AL RAND: Yes.</s>LAKHANI: You don't know for sure?</s>AL RAND: But we take the precaution.</s>LAKHANI: Simple precautions like keeping your hands clean, for instance. But the World Health Organization says the majority of new cases are among health care workers.</s>AL RAND: It might be the infection control measure not applicable perfectly, that's why now we are stressing and pressing on. The infection control majority we take in all hospital, all clinics to protect the health care worker.</s>LAKHANI: So far, there are more than 300 cases worldwide, including more than 100 deaths. MERS was first detected in Saudi Arabia in 2012, other cases reported across the Middle East, Europe, and as far as Malaysia. All the cases are related to travel to the Arabian peninsula, and the overwhelming majority are in Saudi Arabia with more than 100 new cases reported in the past month alone. In a country where millions of Muslims converge every year for pilgrimages, the pressure is on authorities to curb the spread of the virus. They're working closely with the World Health Organization, but there is still concern among Saudi residents.</s>ABDULAZIZ ALI AL-SABI, GENERAL DIRECTOR, MANARAT INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS: I'm the principal of one of the biggest schools in Riyadh. And so when I read about it and I see some (inaudible) about it, it's sure clear that we don't need to be worried, but we need to take care. We need to take good care.</s>LAKHANI: Take good care to prevent the spread of a virus. Leone Lakhani, CNN, Dubai.</s>CLANCY: Next right here on Connect the World...</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our eyes are watching.</s>CROWD: Our eyes are watching.</s>UNIDNETIFIED FEMALE: What do we want?</s>CLANCY: A global campaign to find the more than 200 abducted school girls in Nigeria. We're going to take a look at the efforts and the outrage worldwide.