[Harlow:] Staying with our top story tonight, the tragic fire, in Oakland, California, that is left at least 30 people dead. We are waiting for a news conference from officials in Oakland. It is expected to be really any moment. So we will bring that to you live as soon as it begins. Again, 30 people dead at least in this Oakland warehouse fire, much more of that ahead. Meantime, in Syria, Syrian regime forces have been pounding bombarding Aleppo for the past 24 hours in a bid to try to drive out rebel forces and gain control of the City. Air strikes and mortar rounds pounding eastern Aleppo nonstop reducing buildings to rubble, sending some 30,000 people in just days out of the City. All while international leaders try to hammer out some sort of diplomatic resolution to what has been a bloody civil war in Syria that has ride on and on for years. The United Nations now estimates 600,000 people have been killed in this civil war in Syria. Our Senior International Correspondent Fred Pleitgen joins me live tonight from Aleppo. You are on the ground. You are inside the besieged city, you are seeing this all firsthand. It is the children, Fred, as we showed in your piece on this program last night. It is the children who are bearing the worst of this.
[Fred Pleitgen, Cnn Correspondent:] Yeah. They certainly are, Poppy. And you know one of the things that we always have to keep in mind is that as night falls here in Aleppo, we can see and we can hear all of the shelling going on, we can hear aircraft in the air, also dropping bombs, as well. All you can do is just imagined how bad things must be for families that are still trapped inside these besieged areas, especially, of course, for the children. You know, earlier today we managed to get to one area that was recently taken back by the Syrian government, it was absolutely destroyed and, again, there were many of those displaced people inside there. Trying to cling on to hope and also trying to cling on to any sort of belongings they could find. Here's what we saw.
[Pleitgen:] Driving through a destroyed wasteland, that until recently was one of the main battlegrounds in Syria. Aleppo's district was in rebel hands until last week when government forces moved in with crushing fire power. 13-year-old Udai shows me where a rocket landed next to his house and describes the fear he felt as the war raged. We were very, very frightened Udai says. Normally we would hide in the basement, but luckily that night we slept on the first floor, because that is when two rockets hit right over here. Udai's little brother Abdul Karim is clearly traumatized by the horrors he has witness and still weak from living under siege for weeks with almost no food and water available much of the time. As the rebels lost their grip on this place, many residents fled trying to escape with their lives and not much more. Now, they're coming back, some haven't seen their houses for years. Halid Chavelo left in 2012 when the rebels took this district. Now he is trying to salvage any belongings in what's left of his apartment. I am very sad, because everything is either destroyed or ransacked he says. We found these pictures under the rubble. Even the walls are destroyed but we'll come back here and rebuild. The battle for Aleppo is far from over. Syrian government forces clearly have the upper hand. Taking about half the rebels' territory in the past week alone and continuing to push their offensive with massive fire power. Like in so many districts that have been taken back by the Syrian military, there is massive destruction in this part of eastern Aleppo, but there's no denying the shift in momentum in favor of the Syrian military and also the boost in morale that many of the soldiers have gotten. Troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al Assad said they believe they could capture all of Aleppo, Syrian most important battleground very soon. The rebel headquarters was right here, he says. So the loss of this district was a big blow to them. You can see how our shelling pounding them and that shows that their morale is collapsing. Rebels left behind makeshift cannon when they fled here last week. So far the opposition hasn't found a way to shore up their defenses in the face of this massive and possibly decisive Syrian government offensive. And Poppy in the past 30 hours that we've been on the ground, we've seen absolutely no let up in the shelling. I'm not sure if you can hear some of the rounds that are being fired behind me as we speak right now. In the past couple of days alone, the rebels have lost about 60 percent of the territory that they once held here in Aleppo. Certainly if you speak to some of those people that we saw their in that report, those displaced people very few of them believed that a political solution is something that will happen or something that is even possible especially with the momentum going the way it is right now despite of course the efforts by the international community, Poppy.
[Harlow:] It is absolutely heartbreaking. Fred Pleitgen, thank you for the reporting. And thank you to you and your entire team, your producer, your camera men. We know you are putting your own lives in danger to bring us this live from Syria tonight. Thank you very much. We're also waiting as I said that update from Oakland, California. Tonight the scene of that horrific warehouse fire, the confirm death toll much higher, that originally thought, at least 30 people dead. We will bring you that as soon as it begins, also breaking news tonight on the hotly contested Dakota access pipeline, those protesters winning major battle. In all of this we will tell you what happened, straight ahead live from North Dakota you are on the CNN NEWSROOM.