International outrage as Israeli soldiers storm flotilla

The violent takeover dealt yet another blow to Israel’s international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its three-year-old blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington tomorrow.

In Canada, Mr Netanyahu announced he was rushing home but said he had called the American president and agreed to meet again.

President Barack Obama voiced “deep regret” over the raid and “expressed the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” surrounding the incident.

The activists were heading to Gaza to draw attention to the blockade, which Israel and Egypt imposed after the militant Hamas group seized the territory of 1.5m Palestinians in 2007.

There were conflicting accounts of what happened, with activists claiming the Israelis opened fire without provocation and Israel insisting its forces fired in self defence.

Speaking alongside the Canadian prime minister, Mr Netanyahu expressed “regret” for the loss of life but said the soldiers had no choice.

“Our soldiers had to defend themselves, defend their lives, or they would have been killed,” he said.

Israel said it opened fire after its commandos were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers after they descended from a helicopter to board one of the vessels.

Night-vision footage released by the military showed soldiers dropping from a helicopter one by one and being grabbed by men wielding sticks on the lead boat, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara. The soldiers fell to the deck, where the men continued to beat them and dump one of them from the top deck.

A commando who spoke to reporters on a naval vessel off the coast said he and his comrades were taken off guard by a group of Arabic-speaking men when they landed on the deck.

Some soldiers were stripped of their helmets and equipment and thrown from the top deck to the lower deck and some had even jumped overboard to save themselves, the commando said. At one point, one of the activists seized one of the soldiers’ weapons and opened fire, the commando said.

Communications to the ships were cut shortly after the raid began, and activists were kept away from reporters after their boats were towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Helicopters evacuated the wounded to Israeli hospitals, officials said. Five ships had reached port by early evening and some 136 activists had been removed without serious incident, the military said.

Sixteen were jailed for refusing to identify themselves, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Israel had said activists would be given the choice to be deported or imprisoned.

Israeli officials said the death toll was nine with 30 wounded, after earlier saying 10 people were killed.

A high-ranking naval official displayed a box confiscated from the boat containing switchblades, slingshots, metal balls and metal bats. Most of the dead were Turkish, he said.

Two commandos told reporters that the primary weapons were guns that fired paintballs. They said they resorted to lethal handgun fire after they were assaulted.

Activists, however, painted a completely different picture, saying the commandos stormed the ships after ordering them to stop in international waters, about 80 miles from Gaza’s coast.

A reporter with the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, who was sailing on the Turkish ship leading the flotilla, said the Israelis fired at the vessel before boarding it, wounding the captain.

“These savages are killing people here, please help,” a Turkish television reporter said.

The broadcast ended with a voice shouting in Hebrew: “Everybody shut up!”

At a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israel’s military chief of staff and navy commander said the violence was centred on the lead boat, which was carrying 600 of the 700 activists. Troops took over the five other boats without incident, military chief Gabi Ashkenazi said.

Reaction was swift and harsh, with a massive protest in Turkey. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of “state terrorism” and the government said it was recalling its ambassador and called off military exercises with the Jewish state.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting, while the Arab League planned to meet tomorrow in Cairo.

The European Union deplored what it called excessive use of force and called for the Gaza blockade to be lifted immediately, calling it “politically unacceptable”.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the Israeli “massacre” and declared three days of mourning across the West Bank.

Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the rival Hamas government in Gaza, condemned the “brutal” Israeli attack and called on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to intervene.

In Uganda, Mr Ban condemned the deaths and called for a “thorough” investigation.

Before the ships set sail from waters off Cyprus yesterday, Israel had urged the flotilla not to try to breach the blockade and offered to transfer some of the cargo to Gaza from an Israeli port following a security inspection.