Global General
Israel processes Gaza activists, UN urges inquiry
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-06-01 23:08
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 Protesters shout slogans during a protest in Sanaa June 1, 2010, against the storming of a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza by Israeli marines on Monday. [Agencies] |
JERUSALEM - Israel detained or deported on Tuesday hundreds of activists who were on Turkish-backed aid ships seized en route to Gaza, and the UN called for impartial investigation into the deaths of nine people in the takeover.
While Israel's diplomats worked to calm international outrage, its navy said it was ready to intercept another aid vessel that organisers of the flotilla planned to dispatch to the Gaza Strip, an enclave run by Hamas Islamists, next week.
Activists were held incommunicado by Israel but their accounts began to emerge after some were deported.
"We did not resist at all, we couldn't even if we had wanted to. What could we have done against the commandos who climbed aboard?" said Mihalis Grigoropoulos, who was aboard a vessel behind the Mavi Marmara, the cruise ship on which most of the violence occurred.
"The only thing some people tried was to delay them from getting to the bridge, forming a human shield. They were fired upon with plastic bullets and were stunned with electric devices," Grigoropoulos told NET TV at Athens airport.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who returned from Canada after cancelling White House talks that had been planned for Tuesday, was to convene his cabinet to discuss the fallout from what Israeli newspapers termed a blundered operation.
US President Barack Obama, who has succeeded in reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations through US-mediated indirect talks, said he wanted the full facts soon and regretted the loss of life.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan urged Israel to lift what he called its "inhumane embargo" of Gaza as soon as possible. Once-close Muslim ally Turkey has described Israel's storming of the ships as "state terrorism".