"Greg Stoker, an American veteran aboard one of the boats in the flotilla, said around a dozen naval vessels with their transponders off had approached it. "They are currently hailing our vessels, telling us to turn off our engines and await further instructions or our boats will be seized and we will face the consequences," he said in a shaky video posted on Instagram"
"Those calls were echoed by other European governments, including Italy, which had sent a navy ship to follow the flotilla for part of its journey but stopped as they got closer to Gaza's shores. Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani confirmed the Israeli intervention and said the operation was expected to take 2-3 hours. He told state TV Rai that the boats would be towed to Israel's port of Ashdod and the activists would be deported in the coming days."
"Activists on board a flotilla of vessels sailing toward Gaza said late Wednesday that the Israeli navy has begun intercepting their vessels as they approach the besieged Palestinian territory. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said on X that the navy had reached out to the flotilla to ask them to change course and to warn them that they are approaching "an active combat zone.""
Nearly 50 boats and roughly 500 activists, including Greta Thunberg and Mandla Mandela, are sailing toward Gaza carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid to challenge the Israeli blockade. Around a dozen naval vessels with transponders off approached the flotilla and hailed the boats, ordering engines off and warning of seizure and consequences. The Israeli Foreign Ministry warned the flotilla it was nearing an active combat zone and offered to transfer aid through other channels. European governments, including Italy, monitored the flotilla; Italy said boats would be towed to Ashdod and activists deported, and Israeli forces were told not to use violence. The vessels were in international waters north of Egypt and entered a so-called danger zone.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]