In the early hours of Saturday morning, Hamas fighters infiltrated the southern border of Israel on the ground, and Gaza-based fighters launched a massive barrage of rockets from the sky.

Since then, over 600 Israelis have been killed, and we expect those numbers to go up. That's all according to local Israeli media.

And an unknown number of Israeli citizens and soldiers are being held hostages as well as

potentially some American citizens.

As we've seen in a number of terrifying videos that have been released, I should warn you,

these are quite disturbing.

And this tells us a lot about who's being

held. Like this one, showing a captive Israeli woman being taken away in a motorcycle as she

shouts to her boyfriend who is also being held hostage. The residents of border cities describe

the terror of Hamas militants entering their neighborhoods, coming into their homes, and of bodies

lining the streets

in their small towns. Secretary Blinking confirmed this morning that Americans could be among the

dead and the hostages as well. Mr. Secretary, does the administration know at this point

if U.S. citizens were among the dead or those taken hostage?

So we have reports that several Americans may be among the dead. We are very actively

working to verify those reports. Similarly, we've seen reports about hostages, and there again,

we're very actively trying to verify them and nail that down.

Meaning that there could be some U.S. citizens who have been taken hostage as well, Mr. Secretary?

That's correct.

We don't have an update on that yet, but if we get that over the next hour, we'll certainly bring that to you. In response to what appears to be the worst terrorist attack on Israel

in decades, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed mighty vengeance and declared the enemy will pay

a price it has never known before. We witnessed his words in action overnight as Israel launched

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