News
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Israel deports 600 Gaza flotilla activists: Deported activists accuse Israel of ‘barbarism’* Deportations made as witnesses accuse Israel of shooting without warning
* Pakistani nationals to arrive from Jordan soon: Foreign OfficeJERUSALEM/AMMAN/ISLAMABAD: Israeli naval commandos used batons, tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition during the storming of aid ships bound for Gaza, activists deported by Israel to Jordan said on Wednesday.
“The Israelis just attacked us without warning after dawn prayer,” said Norazma Abdullah, a Malaysian who was among the activists who crossed into Jordan.
“They fired with some rubber bullets but after some time they used live ammunition. Five were dead on the spot and after that we surrendered,” said Abdullah, who was on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara where most of the violence took place.
Abdullah said the Israeli commandos had then kept the activists tied up for 15 hours until they reached the Israeli port of Ashdod.
Israel says activists attacked its commandos as they came aboard the Turkish vessel, forcing them to shoot in self-defence after activists clubbed and stabbed them and snatched some of their weapons.
Israel on Wednesday deported more than 600 foreign activists whose accounts of a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla contradicted Israeli reports that its soldiers acted in self-defence.
The hundreds of activists detained on the boats and diverted to Israel have all been released for deportation, said Yron Zamir, a prisons authority spokesman.
They were all taken to Tel Aviv airport or the Jordanian border.
Authorities said 682 people from 42 countries, with Turks the top participants, were on board the six ships that tried to bust Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Under fire internationally over the bloodshed, Israel retorted that the violence had been initiated by the activists, forcing its soldiers to use live fire in self-defence. But on their return home, many of the activists accused the Israelis of having opened fire without warning. “Israeli commandos started shooting from the air without warning,” Kuwaiti lawyer Mubarak al-Mutawa, who was on the main vessel, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, told reporters in Kuwait City.
The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution setting up an independent international probe into the raid, which took place in international waters of the eastern Mediterranean.
Pakistanis: The government, meanwhile, is greatly relieved that three Pakistan nationals, Syed Talat Hussain, Raza Mahmood Agha and Nadeem Ahmad Khan, who were on board the Gaza-bound “Freedom Flotilla”, have safely reached Amman, Jordan on Wednesday and will reach Pakistan soon, the Foreign Office said.
According to a press release, Ambassador to Jordan Akhtar Tufail and senior officials of the embassy received the three people on arrival at the Jordan-Israel border.
The Pakistani embassy in Amman is processing their travel to Pakistan, the FO said. staff report/agencies
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk