CNN news 2012-11-22 加文本

cnn news 2012-11-22

War planes and rockets crossing paths in the sky. Right now that’s part of daily life for people living in parts of Israel and Gaza. The signs of the fight maybe in the air, but the impact is on the ground. This is an office building in Gaza that’s been used by some media organizations. It was hit by an Israeli air strike on Monday. Israel said Palestinian militants were hiding in there. Israel’s targets include government buildings, police stations and the homes of Hamas officials. That’s the terrorist group that took control of the government of Gaza in 2007. Israel has launched strikes against more than 1,300 sites since the fighting started. The rockets are flying in both directions. In Gaza, militants from Hamas are launching them into Israel. More than 1,000 rockets have been fired from Gaza since the start of the conflict. On Monday, one of those hit a school in southern Israel. It’s been closed since the fighting began.

Now, cnn reporters are in Gaza and Israel covering this conflict, and at times doing their job can put them near the fighting. Now, you are about to see how they react in those situations. First, Anderson Cooper in Gaza, then Frederick Pleitgen in Israel.

One family, also two media centers… Wow. Well, that was a rather large explosion. That occurred, just look out here, I can’t actually see

where the impact that was, it’s actually set off a number of fire alarms. But that was probably the largest explosion that we’ve heard just in the past, really in the past hour. There have been a number of explosions in the last hour or two. But that one, that one was pretty loud.

Ok, we have an alarm going off right now. But I have to seek cover. We are going to go over here. Let’s take the camera of the tripod, though. All right. Seems like something impacted in the distance, not sure how far away. Ok, the alarm stopped. So, it seems the impact was quite away in the distance, I would say, a couple of miles, probably, in the distance. There, over in the sky, you probably won’t be able to see it here, there is an interceptor missile taking off right now, that is the Iron Dome interceptor, right? If you just say the flash in the sky, that was a rocket coming out of Gaza that was just intercepted right now.

Now, you heard Fred Pleitgen mention the Iron Dome. It’s Israeli Defense Systen that shoots down rockets coming in from Gaza, so far it’s intercepted about 30% of those rockets. Frederik has more on this technology and how it works.

This video shows an Iron Dome missile intercepting a rocket fired from Gaza at Tel Aviv on Sunday. The defense system had just been installed in Israel’s largest city a few hours earlier. Several days into the conflict, it’s already clear, the Iron Dome is having a big impact picking off hundreds of rockets. I got a tour of the Israel aircraft industry’s plant that assembles the air defense system.

“Deployment is the matter of minutes.”

Dr. Israel Oznowich is one of those in charge. One key element is an advanced radar.

“The radar such as locates, tracks and intercepts and guides the intercepting missiles within several seconds, few seconds within the launching time.”

It’s extremely hard to shoot down short distance rockets like the ones coming out of Gaza, in part because they are not in the air for older radar systems to lock onto them.