We're following major breaking news
over the skies of Israel.
A wide scale
aerial assault is going on right now
with waves and waves of drones
and missiles streaming in
from Iran, directly from Iran.
Our team on the ground
in Jerusalem has been hearing explosions.
The sirens have been going off
over these past several moments as U.S.
and Israeli forces
have reported intercepting
multiple Iranian attacks.
But we still do not know
what the ultimate impact of this latest
Iranian barrage will be,
not the immediate damage inside Israel
nor the response that it might bring next
from the Israeli military.
Our reporters
and analysts are covering all of this.
We have reporters everywhere
watching all of this unfold.
I want to go right to our chief
international correspondent,
Clarissa Ward.
She's joining us from Tel Aviv.
Clarissa, we heard the sirens going off.
We saw the rockets being intercepted
by the Iron Dome over Jerusalem.
What are you seeing over Tel Aviv,
the largest city in Israel?
Well, we had been
hearing, Wolf, a lot of jets in the sky.
It is quieter now.
People are bracing themselves for ongoing
waves of drones and missiles
and intercepts
potentially going throughout the night.
A lot of concern
as to what this portends.
People really,
I think, just taking in
these extraordinary images
that we're seeing,
particularly over
Jerusalem of those intercepts
over the Al-Aqsa mosque itself,
one of the holiest sites in Islam,
and trying to grapple
with what this portends
for the region more broadly.
We are expecting to hear
from the IDF spokesperson,
Rear Admiral Daniel Hajari,
any moment now.
Israel has closed its airspace.
It has advised residents
throughout the country,
but particularly in several key areas.
I can hear another jet
now in the distance
to remain close to a shelter,
to be vigilant,
to stay close to their phones,
to make sure that they're following
updates. Schools have been closed.
Universities have been closed,
and everyone really just
bracing themselves for what comes next.
Because as we have discussed
previously,
Iran is now declaring this
affair technically.
They have achieved
what they set out to do
and it's now over.
But really,
until we see the scale
and scope of the damage or destruction
that may or may not come as a result
of this unprecedented aerial assault,
it is far too soon to say that
this is over and done with,
not by any stretch of the imagination.
So certainly
tensions here very high
and across the region
as people wait
to see
what these future waves could bring Wolf.
You know, a lot of nervousness
going on right now.
So just to be precise,
I take it that Ben Gurion Airport,
international flights
in and out of Ben
Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv
is now shut down. Is that right?
We have seen
people in this hotel
coming with their suitcases.
They had tried to go to the airport.
They were told don't even bother going,
because as long as you have
cruise missiles,
ballistic missiles, drones in the skies,
of course, they are not going to be
allowing civilian aircraft
to land or take off.
We also saw a lot of people in our hotel
gathering in the lobby
carrying their pillows,
asking where the shelter was.
A lot of nervousness,
as I said, hotel staff
telling them that wasn't necessary
at this stage.
And again,
just to underscore, Wolf,
we haven't heard of direct impacts yet.
We don't have a sense of any
significant casualties yet, though.
There is a report of 110 year
old girl in the Negev area
who was seriously injured.
And so at this stage,
the intercepts do appear
to be remarkably effective.
But that does nothing to detract,
I would argue, Wolf,
from the seriousness of the moment
in terms
of how this could quickly now escalate
into that regional conflagration
that everyone had been fearing
and had been hoping to try to avert.
Clarissa Ward in Tel Aviv for us.
Clarissa, stay safe over there.
We'll be in close touch with you.
I want to go to Jerusalem right now.
Nic Robertson, of course, is on the scene
for us.
Nic, for viewers
who may just be tuning in
right now,
tell us what has been going on
the last hour or two
over the skies of Jerusalem,
a city
that's holy to Muslims,
Christians and Jews.
What's been going on over Jerusalem?
Wolf, there were fighter jets
flying in the skies and all number of
red traces of what appeared
to be incoming
Iranian missiles
being shot down in the sky as the
the intercepts were coming
from multiple different directions
that were
perhaps we saw 30 to 40 intercepts.
You could hear the detonations.
You could hear
detonations coming from
other parts of the city.
You could see at times
what appeared to be missiles flying low
and steady through the air
and then being intercepted.
It appeared that fighter jets
were doing much of the intercepts
that were ongoing,
but that did sound like the detonations
of Iron Dome type
intercepts going on in the background.
I'm hearing jets above,
but there were some very loud detonations
and of course, the sound of sirens
and you could hear
on the streets as well,
the sound of people panicking
when all of this was happening.
Now, there have been no indications
we've had so far
that despite all those intercepts
above this densely populated city
that has both Jewish populations,
Arab populations here as well,
that there were no casualties
that we're aware of so far.
Of course,
the IDF spokesman
will be bringing an update on that.
But I think one thing
that I'm reflecting on now, Wolf,
of course,
we've all been here,
we've spoken over the many months
now since Hamas's
horrendous and horrific October
the seventh attacks and how shocked
Israelis are
and how traumatized
many of them still are,
that their security could be so impacted
and the security dynamic
that they felt in the security pact
with the government that they felt
they had, that
people in Israel
would be safe from attack from outside.
Hamas blew that apart on October 7th, but
Iran is doing that again tonight.
It is another level of attack taking
perhaps that precarious miss,
that concern that Israelis have
about an outside power being able
to bring death and destruction to them.
That is going to reach
another level tonight, it seems.
Again, we're talking about
the crossing of a Rubicon.
We've talked about
the dynamic of Iran now targeting
directly into Israel.
But when you think about that
in human terms,
about the way people living here
are going to feel
about this new level of threat
and how they already were impacted
by Hamas, an October 7th,
I have to reflect that this is,
of course, now
going to be part of what weighs
on the mind of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
when he considers his next move
and how to respond to Iran Wolf.
Yeah, I'm
sure there will be some sort of
Israeli response.
It's unclear what that will be,
but this situation could clearly escalate
dramatically in the coming hours.
There's no doubt about that.
Nic, stand by.
Be safe over there in Jerusalem.
I hate to have to say
be safe in Jerusalem,
but we see what's going
on in Jerusalem right now.