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New Details on Flydubai Attack; Fighting Heats Up Between Houthis and Saudis; Election Day in Brazil. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired October 04, 2026 - 03:00   ET

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

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BEN HUNTE, CNN ANCHOR: You are now in the CNN Newsroom with me, Ben Hunte, in Atlanta, and it is so good to have you with me.

Coming up, we are learning new details about the Flydubai co-pilot suspected of attacking his colleague, and the shocking story from the mouth of the captain who fought off that attack.

Fighting heats up between the Houthis and Saudis, opening the possibility of wider conflict in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

And millions of Brazilians will be voting in just a few hours. The current president wants a fourth term, while his top opponent is hoping to replace him.

Welcome. We are learning new details about the co-pilot suspected of attacking another pilot on board the Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv. The United Arab Emirates attorney general says the suspect attempted to carry out a, quote, terrorist attack by attacking the captain with a crash ax inside the cockpit.

An important note, this is not the axe used in the attack, but it is a typical aircraft cockpit fire axe that can be used for emergency escape and rescue.

We are also learning more about the co-pilot on that flight. Sources tell CNN the Omani citizen, named Hamam al-Hammami, was removed from a previous job at Oman's national airline just last year.

It was reportedly due to concerns over his extremist views. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the captain's courage and invited him to light a flame on Israeli Independence Day. Mr. Netanyahu says it is the highest honor, usually reserved for Israeli citizens, but told the captain, quote, in this case, all the citizens of Israel will embrace you.

The captain recounted the attack to the Israeli leader during that phone call. Have a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SMIT MACHCHHAR, FLYDUBAI CAPTAIN: I remember, I was lying down on the cockpit floor and I felt the aircraft and the whooshing sound and people screaming. And as I was telling the ambassador here that I had that one last fight left in me, that -- you know, call it personal or call it for people, but let's say I did it, that if I don't do it, I'm going to die. And that's when I pushed against everything. I gave everything that I had, and just went for the door and opened the door. And, thankfully, people were waiting to pounce back, took over the control.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNTE: Still, there is growing confusion in Israel over how the suspect was able to serve as a pilot on a flight to Tel Aviv, especially given the country's strict security measures.

CNN's Tamara Qiblawi has the story.

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TAMARA QIBLAWI, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIONS REPORTER AND WRITER (voice over): This is the bloody aftermath of the Flydubai cockpit attack that nearly downed a plane en route to Israel. CNN can reveal the identity of the co-pilot, the alleged attacker, Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national whose views were so extreme, our source says, that he was removed from a position with Oman Air before joining Flydubai.

Hammami appeared to have posted two social media videos. The first post is a compilation of videos showing multiple planes belonging to El Al, Israel's national carrier, both on the tarmac and in the sky. We geo-located one of these videos to Dubai. It was filmed in 2023 from inside the cockpit of an Oman Air flight from Dubai to Muscat.

You can see here that date and flight number tracks with Hammami's time at Oman Air. The video ends with a tribute to Al-Qaeda's former leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, as well as the suicide bomber who killed nine people at a CIA outpost in Afghanistan in 2009.

The second video he posted is A.I. generated. It shows Islam's three holiest sites from the sky. The videos appeared on LinkedIn and Instagram nine hours after the incident, well after Hammami was detained. We don't know if the posts were scheduled in advance or if they were published by someone else. CNN has reached out to LinkedIn and Meta for comment.

We looked at earlier posts, more than 3,000 tweets from a deleted account bearing his name. They were published between 2021 and 2022.

[03:05:01]

These portray a murkier mindset, one obsessed with women. Nearly half the posts reference women, including this one. The post brags about putting women through, quote/unquote, slut tests. In other posts, he refers to them as, quote/unquote, banging machines.

Now, it's still too early to tell what the possible motives were, but the findings raise many questions. Namely, how did Hammami pass his security checks, and how did he end up flying a plane on one of the world's most sensitive routes?

These are questions security officials in the region will be asking as they try to understand what happened.

Tamara Qiblawi, CNN, London.

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HUNTE: Hostilities are escalating between Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis. The rebel group is claiming responsibility for an attack on an Aramco facility in Riyadh. The Houthis say they used ballistic missiles and drones in Saturday's attack, which they maintain was in retaliation for recent Saudi strikes across Yemen.

Yemen's government says it also carried out strikes on Saturday, hitting Houthi targets in the Taiz province. The renewed fighting has already forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, and what happens next could reshape control in Yemen and further disrupt shipping through the Red Sea.

Earlier, I spoke with Hisham Al-Omeisy, senior Yemen adviser with the European Institute of Peace, on whether this could spiral into a much bigger war.

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HISHAM AL-OMEISY, SENIOR YEMEN ADVISER, EUROPEAN INSTITUTE OF PEACE: The Saudis needed to act. They are left with very little room after the Houthi attacks on Aramco and Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah, on critical infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. They wanted to de-escalate. They're the ones who sought the ceasefire in 2022. They wanted to extricate themselves from the conflict in Yemen.

Unfortunately, the Houthis, with their attacks in Saudi, with their attacks on the Saudi ships on the Red Sea, they're dragging them back into the conflict. Saudis are trying to forge some sort of a formula where they form a cohesive force made of Yemeni armed forces tribal factions, other political factions as well, to try to gain ground inside Yemen.

But it's going to take a lot more effort than just Saudi airstrikes against the Houthi targets inside the country. We've seen that happen in -- over the past 11 years of the conflict, where Saudis tried to just simply kind of overpower the Houthis through air power which didn't really yield much results. What they need is a ground invasion at least to kind of move Houthis from the border areas and from the coastline. And that's what the Saudis have been talking about for the past few weeks, but it hasn't materialized yet.

HUNTE: There we are seeing some shocking images while you're speaking there.

The Houthis have just claimed they attacked a facility in Riyadh with missiles and drones. How significant is that escalation, and how far could the Houthis take it? AL-OMEISY: It's quite significant. One of the things that the Houthis have said is that they'll follow a policy of scorched earth. They know that they can't beat the Saudis military to military, so they will employ asymmetric warfare where they'll make it very costly for the Saudis to continue in the conflict, and that includes attacking oil facilities desalination plants electricity grid and what have you.

And by doing so, the Houthis can drag this conflict for a much longer period than the Saudis would hence trying to force the Saudis to concede or to offer concessions. They want to force them to a ceasefire eventually. But that's the Houthi formula is extracting concessions from the Saudis.

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HUNTE: Now to Japan, where police have arrested a U.S. Marine on suspicion of murder and robbery. Investigators say a woman's body was found in a hotel room in Naha City on Saturday. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Police say the 20-year-old suspect was stationed there and is believed to be the man seen on security video entering the hotel with the woman. They say the footage shows him later leaving the hotel with her belongings.

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo posted online that the U.S. is working with Japanese authorities as they do investigate this.

The U.S. Coast Guard has found debris from a medical transport jet that went missing on Saturday with six people on board.

It was located off the coast of Nantucket, an island about 30 miles south of Cape Cod. The air ambulance was flying from Bermuda to Boston. Officials say the two pilots and two medical staff were Canadian. The two others on board were a patient and their family member, who were from Bermuda. According to FlightAware data, the plane was flying at an altitude of 24,000 feet before it plunged 13,000 feet over the course of two minutes.

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Ukraine's president says his country will escalate its attacks on Russian oil refineries but will not target civilians. The remarks came after Russia made multiple strikes on key bridges in Kyiv, causing major travel disruptions in the Ukrainian capital.

Moscow this week launched a series of missile and drone attacks on several cities. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy calls it an effort to force people out of urban centers. He also explained why he believes Russian refineries are an appropriate target.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: We have to respond in any way. With their attacks on our energy, we have to respond on their energy. First of all, oil refineries, et cetera, what gives money them for this war. But we will not respond, of course, just like them, any civilians or objects. I mean, we can't do so because we are another people or at least we are people.

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HUNTE: CNN's Clare Sebastian is live for us in London and joins me now. Good to see you, Clare.

Zelenskyy says Ukraine will respond to the Russian attacks. How much more escalation are we likely to see on that front?

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Ben, Ukraine is innovating all the time with new weapons, new missiles. So, they are governed by their ability to hit further and further into Russia with ever more powerful weapons. And I think, look, we will continue to see them respond as Russia escalates. This is key.

And they are seeing a material impact, frankly. We saw President Putin in the past week come out and say, yes, you know, it has hurt our economy. He said it's cut about 1 percent of Russian GDP, these attacks on refineries. And it is seen by Ukraine as a critical part of not only their defense, but also leverage perhaps when it comes to the possibility of future peace talks.

So, look, as you say, Ukraine says it won't target civilians. But the other part of the story is that they now say they have new intelligence. They've seen documents, a new potential doctrine that Russia has put out, which suggests that Russia's plan for the winter is the opposite. Take a listen to Zelenskyy.

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ZELENSKYY: But we know and we saw documents, and we know that they allow them attack infrastructure, yes, logistic. And especially to attack in the cities, in the villages, everywhere, roads, schools, hospitals, to pressure people to leave the capital, leave different cities. Yes, and because this is the goal of the operation.

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SEBASTIAN: So, look, we haven't seen these documents. We haven't been able to verify this claim that there's this new doctrine.

But, look, you can see this already playing out to some degree. Over the past five or six weeks or so since the end of August, there's been an entirely new rhythm in the air war. Russia has been attacking Ukraine not only overnight with missiles and drones, but basically day and night.

We've seen days where there's only been a couple of hours of no air raid sirens, particularly in the capital, Kyiv. The range of targets has been broadening. We've seen bridges hit at least three times over the last couple of days, a school with children in it last week. That was the first time we've seen a direct hit on a school with the children there.

In Kyiv, we've seen the Academy of Sciences, warehouses, data centers, all of essentially the sort of trappings that support life in these cities. And the playbook from last winter is already underway. We saw the biggest combined attack in the past week on energy infrastructure. So, there is a lot of concern in Kyiv going into the winter.

And international support, in particular when it comes to air defenses, will be critical. The German chancellor, Merz, has just arrived in Kyiv this morning pledging that they will stay with Ukraine, and that they need all the support they can get in the coming weeks. Ben?

HUNTE: Okay. Clare Sebastian in London, thank you very much for that.

Millions of Brazilians are expected to vote in the country's general election, which kicks off later on Sunday. 13 presidential candidates are on the ballot, but the top two are in a tight race. Sitting President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is hoping to win a historic fourth term in office. The leftist leader is framing the vote as a choice between democracy and fascism.

He is also campaigning to protect Brazil's natural resources and independence, too. He accuses the Trump administration of seeking to control both.

His main opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro, is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was found guilty of attempting to overturn the 2022 election in a coup. The younger Bolsonaro has largely inherited his father's far-right base, and he promises to continue his legacy.

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If neither candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, there will be a runoff on October 25th.

Protests turn violent in France as students openly clashed with police. Ahead, how this is impacting French politics.

See you in a moment.

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HUNTE: Welcome back. Tens of thousands of protesters in Spain are calling for a general strike. This comes after the Spanish parliament voted down a housing bill aimed at protecting tenants. The demonstration started after an 87-year-old woman was evicted from her home, causing massive outrage. The housing bill was meant to quiet the anger, but its failure has just fueled more protests.

Violent protests also continue in France as high school students fight openly with police there. The demonstrations are about what the students claim is an underfunded and broken education system.

CNN's Melissa Bell explains how these protests are impacting politics there.

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, for the time being, there seems to be no end in sight to this. There was this meeting yesterday between the education minister and student representatives, which ended with the students announcing that they didn't feel their demands were being addressed, and that they were urging other students to carry on with the movement into next week.

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I think what surprised everyone here in France is how suddenly and how violently this protest, which has sort of been simmering for the last ten days, really escalated this week.

Thursday, state authorities, was a turning point when a lot of it descended into, or rather transformed into urban violence. And on Friday, yesterday, we saw again, there were 1,700 people taken in for questioning. That takes the number over the course of the week to 5,000. Many of them, of course, are minors.

Of those who've ended up being arrested, the question will become what sort of punishment they get. And there has been this question about the police response and how brutal it's been outside some schools. There have also been questions on the part of the government about the presence at some of these barricades of the French far left, the LFI party, which, for its part, defends its right to be at the barricades and defends the right of the students to protest. So, you have this growing political side to the debate.

And remember, we're just really just a few months from the French presidential election, so that was inevitable. But which adds also, of course, more fuel to the fire that is already raging among students. So what we expect to see next week is more of these barricades from Monday.

There is this broader social movement right now on the part of unions and public sector workers. We expect them to have another protest Sunday, but the big one will be on Tuesday. And the latest we've heard from the students is that they're encouraging all students to take part in that, once again, to make their anger plain.

So, very difficult to see at this stage how authorities are going to get a lid on it. They certainly didn't manage it with that meeting yesterday.

HUNTE: The governor of Tennessee has announced that the state's prisons chief will resign following the failed execution of a death row inmate. Frank Strada took over the department in 2023 after serving as a top prison official in Arizona.

During his tenure there, he oversaw several executions that did have complications. The inmate, Christa Pike, is in hospital and receiving treatment for the effects of pentobarbital. She survived two doses of the typically fatal drug during her scheduled execution on Wednesday. This is Tennessee's second failed execution since May.

Cornell University's president is speaking out for the first time about the school's handling of a student's alleged gang rape at a fraternity party in 2024. He called the allegations, quote, deeply disturbing and says the university must do better to prevent sexual violence. CNN's Mark Morales has the latest.

MARK MORALES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT REPORTER: The message from the Cornell University president comes as pressure continues to mount. Students at the university have largely been upset with how the university and the local district attorney has handled the investigation. There's a protest scheduled for Monday.

And this all comes as new reporting from The New York Times shows that there was evidence that campus police wanted to give the local district attorney, but that the office refused to review the evidence because they'd already made up their mind.

They based it largely on the six-page document that Jane Doe had signed and decided from, based off of that, that they weren't going to pursue charges. Now, this new evidence was said to have more interviews and even a deeper dive on some of those chat messages.

Now, ABC News is also reporting that two of the alleged attackers had actually messaged Jane Doe in the days after the incident and actually apologized for what happened to her that night.

And all this is adding to the growing sense of anger that's coming not just from the university, but also from New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who appointed New York Attorney General Letitia James to be the special prosecutor. Now, in this message, we also hear from the university president, who seems to be threading the needle between both accountability and support from the investigations that are coming. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL KOTLIKOFF, PRESIDENT, CORNELL UNIVERSITY: I believe we as an administration and we as a community must do better. We must do everything we can to prevent what happened to Jane Doe and everyone before her and anyone after her from ever happening again.

I welcome the independent review by an outside law firm into all aspects of Cornell's handling of the 2024 matter, which the board will announce next week.

We also support the governor's decision to turn the criminal investigation over to the New York attorney general.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MORALES: The university president also wants to look at fraternities on campus and address accountability amongst the students themselves so that if they see something happening that shouldn't be happening, they can step in amongst themselves, but also address the culture that would actually encourage some of these incidents where a sexual assault or sexual violence from one of these parties actually starts happening, to address that culture from the beginning so that those don't happen.

Mark Morales, CNN, New York. [03:25:00]

HUNTE: The attorney for the woman who made the allegations responded to Cornell president's remarks saying in part, quote, today, we watched and listened to President Kotlikoff's statement. We are hopeful that his statement is backed up by meaningful reforms that leads to real change for the sake of the students at Cornell. We are hopeful, but we are also wary.

The largest Pride celebration in France drew thousands of people this weekend in Paris. They marched through the streets of the city on Saturday, carrying rainbow flags and signs with messages of pride and support. The march usually takes place in June but was postponed due to the extreme heat in Europe.

And in Ecuador, hundreds of pet owners brought their four-legged family members to church for the annual blessing of animals. Priests blessed dogs, cats, rabbits, and even guinea pigs during the ceremony in Quito on Saturday. The tradition honors the Catholic Church's patron saint of ecology and animals. Look at that goldfish. What? Animal Day is usually observed on October 4th across Latin American countries.

Hundreds of colorful hot air balloons dotted the sky over New Mexico for the annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. The event opened with a drone light show before the festival's signature mass release got underway on Saturday morning.

Founded more than 50 years ago with just 13 balloons, the event has now grown into the world's largest ballooning festival. Look at that cow. It lasts nine days with more than 500 balloons, and they're very impressive, scheduled to take flight. I love that.

That's all I've got for you. Thanks for joining me and the team. I'm Ben Hunte in Atlanta. Africa Inc. is next, and then I'll be back with you and the team tomorrow.

See you then.

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