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Haiti Extends State Of Emergency As Violence Grips Country; The Cost Of The Israel-Gaza War Will Be Counted In Childrens' Lives; Malaysian Govt May Renew MH370 Search As Families Protest In Beijing; Expelled Congressman George Santos Running For Congress Again. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired March 08, 2024 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're essentially being prevented by these gangs from going and looking for more food, from fleeing, from getting on a plane if they're able to.

And so, for many of these people, their supplies are running low if they have not already run out.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Patrick, you mentioned some of what it's like for folks on the ground there. Is there an update on whether aid is able to get in? Do we know if that situation is likely to improve anytime soon?

OPPMANN: No. You mentioned -- you mentioned a state of emergency, but the police do not control the streets in Haiti anymore. Its -- it is the gangs and they are preventing aid organizations, NGOs, World Food Programme from bringing in badly needed aid.

I talked to one diplomat. I know from her time here in Havanna, who was in Port-au-Prince, and she said she's running low on drinking waters, having to boil water.

And so even people who were able to stock up food ahead of time, have an emergency fund of food, they are the lucky people. But they are running low.

These gangs have had a profitable history over the years of kidnapping people and they're essentially holding an entire country hostage, insisting, one, that Ariel Henry step down as prime minister.

And then they do not want an international force, this thousand-plus force of soldiers from Kenya to come and restore order because that threatens their livelihood, their many illegal businesses, including drug trafficking.

So very clearly here, the gangs have the upper hand and time is running out.

SANCHEZ: A tragic situation continues to unfold there.

Patrick Oppmann, live for us from Havana, thanks so much.

It is one of the biggest mysteries in the history of aviation. The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Today marks 10 years since the plane vanished with hundreds of people on board. Coming up, growing calls for a new search.

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[14:36:18]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A warning to our viewers that what you're about to see is quite, quite disturbing. And it has to do with children.

This is the human cost of the Israel-Gaza war. These are tiny figures of children on the walls of our studio. One for almost each of the 12,800 kids who have died in Gaza, according to numbers from Gaza's Health Ministry.

The death toll, quite frankly, is hard to keep up with. Airstrikes and now malnutrition and dehydration are killing them.

Here's a glimpse inside Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza where several children have died of starvation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: Tiny limbs, bones protruding.

(CRYING)

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: The constant sound of crying from children now facing starvation in Gaza.

These will little Liazan's (ph) final moments. His tiny fingers gripped in his mother's hand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Yourzhan Al-Kafarnah (ph) was just 10 years old when he died on Monday. And a day later, UNICEF sounded this alarm. The babies of thousands of women who are due to give birth in the next month in the Gaza Strip are at risk of dying.

Premature births are up. Mothers dehydrated and traumatized struggle to breastfeed. They can't find formula. They can't find clean water.

And without relief, the threat from famine could eclipse that of airstrikes. Like the one this past weekend in Rafah that killed five- month-olds, Waseem and Niamhwanda (ph), twins, long awaited by their parents, who finally conceived 11 years after they married, according to Reuters.

Their mother, Ronya (ph), told the news agency, "We were asleep. We're not shooting and we were not fighting. What is their fault? What is their fault? What is her fault?" In October, an Israeli strike killed 11-year-old Molloc Sharoff (ph)

along with her 10-year-old brother, Malloc (ph), and their six and three-year-old sisters, Yasmine (ph) and Nor (ph), according to "The Washington Post." And 13 of their cousins also died.

In October, Al Jazeera reported that an airstrike on a home where Gaza bureau chief, Whial Al-Dahdouh's (ph) family was sheltering after being displaced, killed his wife, his 15-year-old son, Mahmoud, his seven-year-old daughter, Sham (ph), and his one and-a-half-year-old grandson, Adam.

The distraught journalist, carrying Adam's tiny body through Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital shortly afterward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is pretty tough video to watch. And it's actually even worse than this because a statement from the family said that there were 12 members of the Al-Dahdouh (ph) family who were killed, nine of them were children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: In November, brother and sister, Tarik (ph) and Reim (ph), 5 and 3 years old, were asleep side-by-side when an airstrike killed them in southern Gaza.

Their grandfather, Khalid Knob Khan, told CNN he was wishing, hoping that they were only sleeping, but they weren't sleeping, they were gone.

Al Jazeera reported that Salma Jau Bear (ph) was fleeing Gaza City with her family in December when they came under fire and the four- year-old was shot in the neck and died. The middle child in the family, Salmas father described her as mischievous and intelligent.

And in January, six-year-old Hin Rajab (ph) was trapped in a car for days with the bodies of several family members, all killed trying to escape northern Gaza.

This harrowing audio of her cousin calling the Palestine Red Crescent for help captured the moment that their car came under attack from an Israeli tank.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(GUNFIRE)

(SCREAMING)

(GUNFIRE)

[14:40:02]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello? Hello?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Hin's (ph) body was found the following month along with two ambulance workers who had gone missing trying to rescue her.

There are too many victims to name. There's too many to fathom. And there are countless orphans, like Lana (ph), whose stories CNN's Jomana Karadsheh told.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Six-year-old Lana (ph) was under the rubble of her home for three days.

"Mommy and daddy are underneath that" she says.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

KARADSHEH: "I just want mama. I went baba. I want my family," Lana cries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: According to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 72,000 Palestinians have been injured since the start of the war. And a large proportion of them are children.

Dr. Mohammad Subeh is an emergency room physician who came from California to help in Gaza.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MOHAMMAD SUBEH, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: My -- my first several patients who are pediatric patients, one shot in the arm while he was sleeping in the tent, another two kids pulled out of the rubble. We're still waiting to locate their family. Gunshot wound to the thigh in a 3-month-old, crushed the extremities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Of course, this conflict began after October 7th as dozens of Israeli children were among those brutally murdered and kidnapped by Hamas.

And 42 children kidnapped that day, too still held captive, according to Reuters and "The Times of Israel," after 40 were released in the temporary ceasefire.

And 116 were orphaned and 38 children were killed, including the youngest victim of the October 7th massacre. Mila Cohen, barely 10- months-old, shot to death at Kibbutz Bury (ph). Her father and grandmother also murdered.

And now here, this picture, five months later, another little girl named Mila, breathing her last breath. Mila Abdul Nabi in Gaza. She died this past week of starvation. She was 3.

We'll be right back.

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[14:46:53]

SANCHEZ: Ten years ago today, 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared over the Indian Ocean. The plane was headed to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur but suddenly fell off the radar.

Although pieces of debris have turned up, neither the plane itself nor any of the victims have ever been found.

Today, family members who lost loved ones protested outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing. They're demanding the Chinese government reopen the search.

And it could potentially happen. Malaysian authorities say they are ready to discuss a possible new attempt.

CNN aviation analyst, Miles O'Brien, is here.

Miles, let's start with the very basics. Ten years later, a series of investigations have taken place. What information do we have about what happened to M.H.370?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, Boris, the shreds of information we had have been kind of hacked out of data, in a way.

The aircraft lost its transponder and did not communicate abruptly shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. And it was presumed, once it disappeared from radar screens, to have likely fallen from beneath that point. But there was no wreckage there.

It was subsequently determined, you may recall, that there was a satellite device on board, Inmarsat satellite device, which allowed it to communicate with the home office as it were.

And while it wasn't actively engaged in communication, it was saying -- pinging, saying, I'm here. And that satellite analysis led to this stark conclusion that this aircraft took an abrupt turn, flew a rather circuitous route around the islands and then headed straight to the south, to the southern Indian Ocean.

Beyond that, we don't know that much. We've had a lot -- there's been a lot of mathematical analysis of those radio pings to try to determine where on the face of the globe that aircraft might be. But it's not a very exact science. And it's a very big ocean.

SANCHEZ: Yes, that is a good point.

I'm wondering, of the official accounts, the official theories of what happened, which do you believe has the most -- that is backed up by the most amount of limited data that we have, which is the most believable claim, I guess you could say? O'BRIEN: Yes, Boris, there's no way I can come up with a scenario for what happened and what we know about what happened without some sort of deliberate action by some individual on board that aircraft.

It's clear that it was purposeful to disappear. And it's clear that it was steered in that direction. So we know that.

There's no magical scenario that any aviation expert I've ever spoken to where you could have something that will be that sudden, that apparently catastrophic, and also allow for that aircraft to continue to fly beyond 10 hours of flight.

[14:50:08]

That -- those two things just don't go together unless there is some desire by an individual on that aircraft to disappear. And to me, it's an inescapable conclusion.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Miles, do you hold out hope that we'll ever get an official answer, perhaps with the help of new technology or another layer of investigation that has not yet been reached?

O'BRIEN: Yes, we've got to keep hope alive, don't we on behalf -- just for the benefit of these families, if nothing else.

But for -- the larger aviation community needs to know the answer, too. If the aircraft is ever found, the black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder, and the flight data recorder might be able to at least eliminate some scenarios.

It may not ultimately determine why an individual might have done this, but it could exclude the possibility that there was some sort of mechanical failure or other factor involved here.

You know, 10 years underwater at depth that will be some test of the technology of these so-called black boxes.

But if -- if the searchers could ever locate the wreckage and see it, understand how it might have broken apart or not, and what is in those boxes, that could finally get us to a point where we can say something more definitively.

SANCHEZ: We've seen sort of false starts when it comes to a new expansive search for the plane. Malaysian authorities recently indicated they could be open to a new surge. What would you say is the likelihood that we see one?

O'BRIEN: I think -- I think one is brewing here. I think there's a lot of pressure right now to re-engage. There is new technology. After all, 10 years have passed here.

And I got to tell you, if you'd asked me 10 years in a day ago whether a triple seven could go missing like this, I would have said you're crazy, Boris. And so here we are 10 years later, a 777 is still missing. The technology for finding things underwater has progressed

dramatically. This company, which would like to do one of these "no- find, no-fee" searches, but still needs permission to do that, is ready to try this new fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles to attempt to find the wreckage.

And there is a theory out there by an aerospace analyst and physicist, Richard Godfrey, which comes up with an interesting scenario based on disturbance patterns in ham radio signals, which leads him to believe that the previous searches had been in the wrong place.

Obviously, they'd been in the wrong place. But they've been way off. And that there is a location about 1,200 miles due west of Perth, Australia, where he believes this new data might lead to a finding.

So if nothing else, they've got at a run that one down, I think.

SANCHEZ: So many unanswered questions. It continues to haunt the public, most of all, obviously, the families who lost loved ones because of that flight.

Miles O'Brien, we'll have to leave the conversation there. Thanks so much for the time.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

Brianna?

KEILAR: After being charged with misusing campaign funds, being kicked out of Congress, Republican George Santos is launching a new campaign for Congress. Makes sense, right?

And last night, Santos took advantage of his floor privileges as a disgraced, but still former lawmaker, to attend the State of the Union address.

CNN's Melanie Zanona is live on Capitol Hill for us.

That was really something to behold as people learned that you can still go onto the floor even if you're in George Santos' situation, Mel.

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes. That's exactly right. And as you can imagine, most lawmakers were not exactly enthusiastic about George Santos' surprise appearance last night.

The House really thought it had turned the page on the George Santos saga, but he had different plans.

Not only did he show up last night to the State of the Union, decked out in a bedazzled collar and his really flashy silver loafers but he also announced mid-speech that he was planning on launching a primary challenge against Republican Nick Lalota, one of the Republicans who lead the charge to expel him. So most Republicans saw this as nothing more than a cry for attention.

Here's a little bit more of what Republicans had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NICK LALOTA (R-NY): George Santos is one of the most bizarre people I have ever met. I surely didn't hug him or greet him with any sort of a niceness whatsoever. He's an embarrassment to here in Congress.

REP. ANTHONY D'ESPOSITO (R-NY): I think George Santos should focus -- if that's really his name -- that's what he should focus. He should focus more on worrying about his personal issues than trying to come back here and make another spectacle out of this -- one of this country's oldest institutions.

[14:55:02]

REP. GARRETT GRAVES (R-LA): I -- look, I really hope -- I wish him the best, but that doesn't include being back here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZANONA: Now as far as his congressional bid, it is still very much seen as a long shot.

We should also point out that George Santos is going to be on trial later this year for a variety of criminal charges. So Nick Lalota says he is not taking the threat very seriously -- Bri?

KEILAR: Yes, they wish him the best. Now go away.

And what are they doing to make that a reality, Mel?

ZANONA: Yes, well, as pointed out earlier, he is still allowed floor privileges because he is a former member. And unless they would've stripped those privileges in the expulsion resolution, he is still currently allowed to come to the floor whenever he wants.

But there is now talk of passing a bill that would strip expelled members of their floor privileges, something a Democrat. Ritchie Torres is looking into it. And Nick Lalota says he's looking into it as well.

KEILAR: All right. We'll see.

Melanie Zanona, thank you.

Still ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, a new warning from the CDC. Something you may have in your medicine cabinet is landing thousands of kids in the E.R.

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