Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists seized by Israeli commandos in a bloody raid on their flotilla returned home to a hero’s welcome yesterday, with Turkish crowds cheering their attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
A funeral was to be held in Istanbul later yesterday for the nine activists killed during the Israeli raid on six aid ships — eight Turks and an American of Turkish origin.
Thousands packed Istanbul’s main Taksim Square in the early morning hours before moving to Istanbul airport to welcome home the activists expelled from Israel. They waved Turkish, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags while chanting “God is Great!”
PHOTO: AFP
One large banner read “Murderous Israelis: Take your hands off our ships” while others in the crowd held signs with slogans like “From now on, nothing will be the same” and “Intifada is everywhere — at land and at sea” — in reference to the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
All of the nine activists died from gunshot wounds — some from close range — according to initial forensic examinations done in Turkey after the bodies were returned, NTV television reported, citing unidentified medical sources.
Israel maintains that the commandos only used their pistols as a last resort after they were attacked, and released a video showing soldiers in riot gear descending from a helicopter into a crowd of men with sticks and clubs. Three or four activists overpowered each soldier as he landed, beating each one to the deck, where they were surrounded by more men with sticks.
Returning activists admitted fighting with the Israelis but insisted their actions were in self defense, because the ships were boarded in international waters by a military force.
“We first thought they were trying to scare us,” said Bulent Yildirim, the head of the Islamic charity group IHH that organized the flotilla, following his deportation from Israel yesterday. “When we started morning prayers, they began attacking from everywhere, from the boats, from the helicopters. Our friends only performed civil resistance.”
Yildirim said the activists fought the Israeli commandos with chairs and sticks and that they seized weapons from some Israeli soldiers, but threw them into the sea.
Israel says two of the seven soldiers wounded were shot with guns that were wrested from them, while a third was stabbed.
“Even if we had used the guns, that would be still a legitimate self defense,” Yildirim said.
The incident has increased tensions in the region, including with Turkey, Israel’s closest ally in the Muslim world. On Thursday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel’s actions “an historic mistake.”
“Israel risks losing its most important friend in the region if it doesn’t change its mentality,” he said.
The activists say their flotilla aimed to bring 10,000 tonnes of aid to Palestinians in Gaza, which has been under a three-year blockade by Israel and Eygpt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hotly rejected calls to lift the blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, insisting the ban prevents missile attacks on Israel.
Netanyahu said the aim of the flotilla was to break the blockade, not to bring aid to Gaza. If the blockade ended, he warned, hundreds of ships would bring in thousands of missiles from Iran, to be aimed at Israel and beyond.
“This was not the ‘Love Boat,”’ Netanyahu said in an address to the nation. “It was a hate boat.”
Israel also says the sticks, iron bars and knives that passengers allegedly used in the shipdeck battle showed their purpose was not humanitarian.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said it was people from Yildirim’s Foundation for Human Rights and Freedom and Humanitarian Relief, known by its Turkish initials IHH, who incited the violence.
“Unfortunately on one particular boat there were representatives of a very extreme Turkish Islamic radical group, the IHH,” he said.
“It’s documented as having terrorist connections,” he said.
The IHH vehemently denies ties to radical groups and is not on the US list of terror groups.
Other activists involved in the flotilla also insisted their purpose was entirely peaceful.
“However much the Israelis are screaming that they have found weapons, it is just nonsense,” said Henning Mankell, who was traveling on the Gaza convoy.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS