Israelis opened fire before boarding Gaza flotilla, say released activists
First eyewitness accounts of raid contradict version put out by Israeli officials
Demonstrators wave the flags of Turkey and Palestine in a protest against Israel in Istanbul yesterday. The banners read 'Open sea pirate Israel' and 'Enough is enough'. Photograph: Murad Sezer/Reuters
Survivors of the Israeli assault on a flotilla carrying relief supplies to Gaza returned to Greece and Turkey today, giving the first eyewitness accounts of the raid in which at least 10 people died.
Arriving at Istanbul's Ataturk airport with her one-year-old baby, Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin said Israeli troops opened fire before boarding the Turkish-flagged ferry Mavi Marmara, which was the scene of the worst clashes and all the fatalities. Israeli officials have said that the use of armed force began when its boarding party was attacked.
"It was extremely bad and very tough clashes took place. The Mavi Marmara is filled with blood," said Cetin, whose husband is the Mavi Marmara's chief engineer.
She told reporters that she and her child hid in the bathroom of their cabin during the confrontation. "The operation started immediately with firing. First it was warning shots, but when the Mavi Marmara wouldn't stop these warnings turned into an attack," she said.
"There were sound and smoke bombs and later they used gas bombs. Following the bombings they started to come on board from helicopters."
Cetin is among a handful of Turkish activists to be released; more than 300 remain in Israeli custody. She said she agreed to extradition from Israel after she was warned that conditions in jail would be too harsh for her child.
"I am one of the first passengers to be sent home, just because I have baby. When we arrived at the Israeli port of Ashdod we were met by the Israeli interior and foreign ministry officials and police; there were no soldiers. They asked me only a few questions. But they took everything – cameras, laptops, cellphones, personal belongings including our clothes," she said.
Kutlu Tiryaki was a captain of another vessel in the flotilla. "We continuously told them we did not have weapons, we came here to bring humanitarian help and not to fight," he said.
"The attack on the Mavi Marmara came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis."
Six Greek activists who returned to Athens accused Israeli commandos of using electric shocks during the raid.
Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the Sfendoni, told reporters: "Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat. They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used."
Michalis Grigoropoulos, who was at the wheel of the Free Mediterranean, said: "We were in international waters. The Israelis acted like pirates, completely out of the normal way that they conduct nautical exercises, and seized our ship. They took us hostage, pointing guns at our heads; they descended from helicopters and fired tear gas and bullets. There was absolutely nothing we could do … Those who tried to resist forming a human ring on the bridge were given electric shocks."
Grigoropoulos, who insisted the ship was full of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza "and nothing more", said that, once detained, the human rights activists were not allowed to contact a lawyer or the Greek embassy in Tel Aviv. "They didn't let us go to the toilet, eat or drink water and throughout they videoed us. They confiscated everything, mobile phones, laptops, cameras and personal effects. They only allowed us to keep our papers."
Turkey said it was sending three ambulance planes to Israel to pick up 20 more Turkish activists injured in the operation.
Three Turkish Airlines planes were on standby, waiting to fly back other activists, the prime minister's office said.
Paintballs to pistols, Israel admits ship blunders
(Reuters) - Wrong intelligence, wrong guns, wrong tactics. Israel's military acknowledged big mistakes on Tuesday during the bungled boarding of a Gaza-bound aid ship in which elite troops killed nine international activists.
Though Israelis rallied to their conscripts in the face of foreign fury, the domestic recrimination -- with "Foul-up" and "Fiasco" dominating newspaper headlines -- betrayed an erosion of confidence recalling the setbacks of the 2006 Lebanon war.
One commentator demanded that Defense Minister Ehud Barak step down. Cabinet members vowed to investigate, but their insistence that the pro-Palestinian activists had provoked the bloodshed found a ready ear among an irate Israeli public.
The secretive Flotilla 13 marine commando unit was brought out of the shadows to try to explain the operation's failings.
"We did not expect such resistance from the group's activists as we were talking about a humanitarian aid group," one unnamed naval lieutenant told Israel's Army Radio.
"The outcome was different to what we thought, but I must say that this was mainly because of the inappropriate behavior of the adversary we encountered."
Israel's police quarantine of activists from the Mavi Marmara prevented airing of dissenting testimony. The navy also jammed communications while storming the converted cruise ship.
That did not stop passengers broadcasting a globally viewed video clip that, ironically, helped Israel's case by showing a clutch of activists clubbing and stabbing two marines.
Israel released its own night-vision mission footage of a half-dozen commandos grappling with as many as 30 activists.
The images stirred undercurrents of disbelief and disgrace in Israel. Fabled for their silent exploits at sea, the fighters who rappelled onto the Mavi Marmara looked unfit for the melee -- outnumbered, almost overpowered, though far from outgunned.
Jason Alderwick, a maritime warfare expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, faulted the marines for not commandeering the vessel more efficiently.
"Success begins with planning and with decent intelligence, and they have boarded such ships before," he said. "This time they didn't go in hard enough, fast enough and in sufficient numbers to establish overwhelming control."
OVER THE TOP
Some of the troops wielded paintball rifles -- non-lethal weapons designed to bruise, beat back and mark suspects for later arrest, but which apparently proved of limited use against activists who had the protection of life-jackets and gas masks.
"It's clear that the equipment for crowd-dispersal with which they were issued was insufficient," Israel's armed forces chief, Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, told reporters.
There was little question of calling off the raid once the first Israelis were in the fight and vulnerable, though the navy said some commandos opted to escape by jumping overboard.
Israel said seven marines were injured, one after activists pitched him over a railing and two with gunshot wounds, possibly from backup pistols that were wrested away from them.
"A number of the fighters who understood the situation, the threat posed to their lives, reoriented themselves and simply worked with live (ammunition) weapons as soon as they came down," the marines lieutenant said.
Some experts questioned whether a police anti-riot unit might have tackled the resistance with less bloodshed.
But an Israeli Defense official said only marines were capable of the takeover 120 km (75 miles) in the choppy Mediterranean, timed for darkness to surprise the activists and deprive attendant journalists of spectacular pictures.
Barak's deputy, Matan Vilnai, brushed off the call in the best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth daily for the Defense minister's resignation. He hinted Israel had exhausted covert means of stalling the Mavi Marmara and five other vessels in a flotilla that sailed for Gaza in defiance of an Israeli campaign to isolate the Hamas Islamists who rule the Palestinian territory.
"Everything was considered. I don't want to elaborate beyond that, because the fact is there were not up to 10, or however many ships were (originally) planned," Vilnai told Israel Radio, alluding to rumors that some of the vessels had been sabotaged.
Alon Ben-David, Defense analyst for Israel's Channel 10 television, noted that video footage appears to show marines thwarted an attempt by activists to tie one of the rappelling ropes to the deck, a major threat to the hovering helicopter.
"The outcome could have been much worse," Ben-David said.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean in London; Editing by Paul Taylor)
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