http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0531/breaking4.html
Israeli commandos stormed Gaza-bound aid ships today, killing at least 10 pro-Palestinian activists and unleashing a diplomatic crisis.
The violent end to a Turkish-backed attempt to break Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip by six ships carrying some 600 people and relief supplies raised a storm of protest across the Middle East and far beyond.
As the navy escorted the ships toward the Israeli port of Ashdod, accounts remained sketchy of the pre-dawn interception out in the Mediterranean.
But the use of lethal force angered Israel's long-time Muslim ally Turkey, which had supported the convoy. The United Nations condemned the violence and demanded an explanation from Israel, European Union demanded an inquiry and France said it was "profoundly shocked".
Israeli officials said the marines were met with knives and staves when they boarded the ships, which included a large ferry flying the Turkish flag. In at least one incident, an activist seized a gun from the boarding party, they said. A military spokesman said two pistols were found on the captured vessels.
A Turkish charity involved with the flotilla claimed at least 15 people were killed, most of them Turkish nationals.
Independent accounts of the clash were not available since the navy cut ship-to-shore communications and Israel imposed military censorship on reports of the operation.
The convoy was organised, among others, by a Turkish human rights organisation, the Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH). Turkey had urged Israel to allow it safe passage and said the 10,000 tonnes of aid the convoy was carrying was humanitarian.
Irish activists aboard the 1,200-ton cargo ship Rachel Corrie, named after an American who was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, had set sail from Dundalk earlier this month to join the convoy.
In a statement this morning, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said he was "gravely concerned" over the incident. He said the department was seeking to confirm the safety of the eight Irish nationals who sailed with the Turkish led flotilla.
"The reports of up to 15 people killed and 50 injured, if confirmed, would constitute a totally unacceptable response by the Israeli military to what was a humanitarian mission attempting to deliver much needed supplies to the people of Gaza."
Israel's attempts to maintain its three-year-old blockade on the Hamas-ruled enclave while avoiding bloodshed that would spark an international outcry collapsed in spectacular fashion.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of committing a “massacreâ€. He declared three days of official mourning for the dead.
Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, blamed the activists for the violence and branded them allies of Hamas and al-Qaeda. Had they got through, he said, they would have opened an arms smuggling route to Gaza. There was no question of easing the blockade, he said.
In a statement, the Israeli military said there "over 10 deaths among the demonstrators and numerous injured". It said at least five soldiers were hurt.
Israeli forces were on high alert on the Gaza, Syrian and Lebanese borders as well as around Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and areas of northern Israel where much of the country's Arab population lives. Israeli officials denied reports that a leading Israeli Arab Islamist had been killed on the convoy.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Ottawa today and officials said he was considering whether to cancel a White House meeting tomorrow with US president Barack Obama and fly home early.
Those talks had been expected to focus on US efforts to advance tentative negotiations with Abbas. But peace talks, mediated by Mr Obama's envoy, seem unlikely to continue for now.
Israel's Arab enemy Syria, which hosts the exile leadership of Gaza's ruling Hamas movement, called for an emergency Arab League meeting to discuss the incident.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel's interception of the ships was "inhuman".
The United Nations' coordinator for Middle East peace, Robert Serry, and the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Filippo Grandi, expressed shock at the killings aboard boats carrying humanitarian supplies in international waters.
"Such tragedies are entirely avoidable if Israel heeds the repeated calls of the international community to end its counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza," they said in a joint statement.
More worryingly for Israel, its allies were unlikely to show much sympathy. The Turkish government, long Israel's lone friend in the Muslim Middle East, "strongly protested". It marked a new low in an already crumbling Israeli relationship with
Ankara.
"Israel will have to suffer the consequences of this behaviour," a Turkish foreign ministry statement said.
Greece, some of whose citizens were on the convoy, halted a joint naval excercise with Israel and summoned the Israeli ambassador in Athens.
The convoy, carrying 10,000 tonnes of supplies, set off from international waters near Cyprus yesterday in defiance of warnings that it would be intercepted. Israel had hoped to end the operation without bloodshed and had prepared air-conditioned tents at Ashdod for detainees.
Mr Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev said: "We made repeated offers that they should bring the boats to the port of Ashdod and from there we guaranteed that all humanitarian cargo would be transferred to the people of Gaza."
Greta Berlin, a spokeswoman for the Free Gaza Movement that organised the convoy, said: "How could the Israeli military attack civilians like this? Do they think that because they can attack Palestinians indiscriminately they can attack anyone?"
Israel's Western allies have been critical of the embargo on the 1.5 million people of Gaza, which Israel says is aimed at preventing arms supplies from reaching Hamas.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh described the Israeli action as piracy and praised the activists as heroes.
The United Nations and Western powers have urged Israel to ease its restrictions to prevent a humanitarian crisis and allow for postwar reconstruction. Israel says food, medicine and medical equipment are allowed in regularly.
