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CNN: ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES July 17, 2006

Lebanon

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COOPER: We thought you'd be interested in this. This appeared on Hezbollah TV earlier today. It looks like a music video. It says -- the people are chanting, saying "a warning to the oppressors, a warning to the occupiers." That warning of course being heard loud and clear over the last several days.

We've heard statements from Hezbollah leadership saying if Israel wants a wide open war that is what they'll get. Also just yesterday Hezbollah's leader saying that they have many surprises still in store for Israel.

Israel no doubt will say that they have surprises of their own. The bombardment of Lebanon continues heavily in the south, as well as in Beirut, and we'll have live reports throughout the region over this next hour and a half or so.

We're coming to you from Larnaca, Cyprus, and that ship behind me, as this bank of fog slowly lifts, is an Italian destroyer. That brought several hundred evacuees from Beirut just yesterday morning. And as I've been saying in this last half hour, we are anticipating a ferry chartered by the French that has several hundred more evacuees, and we're told maybe as many as 50 Americans on board that, people with medical emergencies who desperately needed to get out.

State Department saying there may be as many as 25,000 Americans right now in Lebanon needing to get out, but the exact numbers clearly are not known at this point.

Some in the U.S. have been very critical of U.S. efforts to get those Americans out. We've seen several forays of U.S. Marine Chinook helicopters bringing several dozen Americans out on Sunday, also on Monday. But a lot more -- there are a lot more Americans still waiting to get out and a lot of people waiting to see what the U.S. -- what plan the U.S. comes up with.

They've sent some destroyer in the region. They're also said to be hiring, chartering a cruise ship to bring as many Americans off as needed. We're going to continue to follow that, though, over the course of the next several days from here in Cyprus and also from Beirut.

Tom Foreman now takes a look now at the power of Hezbollah, in particular the power of their arsenal. They're said to have as many as 10,000 rockets. And some in Israel have been surprised at the distance those rockets can land and can be fired from. Tom Foreman takes a look.

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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From the moment this fighting began Hezbollah has provided surprises. The attack on an Israeli ship blockading Lebanon from the sea, for example, caught even Israeli military officials off guard, because Hezbollah apparently used a radar-guided explosive device for the hit.

BRIG. GEN. IDO NEHUSHTAN, ISRAELI AIR FORCE: I think that we didn't know this missile to be existing in Lebanon, in the hands of the Hezbollah. But this is a very advanced shore-to-sea missile which not many nations have.

FOREMAN: Military analysts believe over the past five years Hezbollah has been bringing in more powerful, longer-range rockets from Iran via Syria. For years the group has relied on a stockpile of thousands of portable Katyusha rockets, which are not very accurate and can often fire only five or 10 miles.

These new rockets must be launched from special equipment, normally mounted on a vehicle, which makes them more easily spotted and attacked by airplanes.

But look at the difference these rockets make. In this simulation a rocket is being fired from Lebanon south into Israel. By this point in its flight an old Katyusha would already be out of fuel and falling. Not these new rockets. Armed with warheads that can weigh several hundred pounds, military experts say they can be reasonably well targeted on cities about 20 miles away.

JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: The nightmare scenario for the Israelis for several decades now has been that Hezbollah would basically wage a war of cities, firing hundreds if not thousands of these rockets across the border into northern Israel, making life extremely difficult for the Israeli population in that part of the country.

FOREMAN: So far authorities believe a couple of dozen of these new rockets have slammed into the port city of Haifa.

(on camera) Israeli military officials say their warplanes destroyed at least one truck carrying some of these new rockets. But Hezbollah is believed to have hundreds more.

(voice-over) And Hezbollah leaders have dropped ominous hints that some of their rockets may be able to strike other Israeli cities much further away from the Lebanese border.

Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

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