Five Germans, six Greeks and several others — among them a Turkish woman and her one-year-old baby — were released Tuesday, but Israel barred access to hundreds of other activists seized during the raid Monday that killed at least nine people and wounded dozens.
Israel sent commandos onto six ships carrying nearly 700 activists, and there have been conflicting accounts of what happened during the assault. Both sides claim to have been attacked by the other and so far it is not possible to reconcile those claims. Most of those killed were aboard the Turkish-flagged ship Mavi Marmara.
Norman Paech, a former member of Germany's Left Party who was aboard the Marmara, said the ship was surrounded by small Israeli assault boats about 4:30 a.m. Monday morning.
"Moments later, we heard detonations and then soldiers from helicopters above us dropped down on board," Paech said. "The soldiers were all masked, carrying big guns and were extremely brutal." The Israeli government says its soldiers were defending themselves, and has released video showing soldiers in riot gear being struck by activists with sticks — and one soldier appears to have been shoved into the water. Israel says the activists were armed with metal rods, knives, slingshots and two pistols snatched from the troops.
When asked about the Israeli video, Paech said he only saw three activists resisting.
"They had no knives, no axes, only sticks that they used to defend themselves," Paech said at a news conference in Berlin after he and four other Germans returned Tuesday from Tel Aviv.
Still, he said, he could "not rule out" that others used weapons somewhere else on the boat.
Matthias Jochheim, a German doctor on board the Marmara, said he saw four dead activists who had been killed by gunshots.
"There were at least another 50 injured and an Egyptian doctor told me that he saw a fifth dead activist," said Jochheim, who helped attend to the wounded.
Turkey said four Turkish citizens were confirmed dead and another five dead were also believed to be Turks, although Israeli authorities were still trying to confirm their nationalities.
Jochheim said most victims, including the injured, seemed to be Turkish activists who had hired the Marmara and were on deck when Israeli soldiers boarded.
German Left Party lawmaker Inge Hoeger, who was also on the Marmara, condemned the raid as a "war crime." "We felt like we were in the middle of a war, like we'd been kidnapped," said Hoeger. "What the Israelis did is a violation of international law." Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin told reporters in Istanbul that she and her baby son were hiding in her cabin's bathroom on the Marmara when Israeli soldiers rappelled onto the ship.
"There was a massacre on board," Cetin said. "The ship turned into a lake of blood." Her husband — the ship's engineer — was still being held but she returned home after Israeli officials warned her that jail would be too harsh for her baby. She told reporters the Israelis "confiscated everything, our telephones, laptops are all gone." She also defended her decision to bring a baby into such a volatile situation.
"We were aware of the possible danger" in joining the trip, Cetin said. "But there are thousands of babies in Gaza. If we had reached Gaza, we would have played with them and taken them food." Some 400 Turkish activists were on the six-ship flotilla, along with more than 30 Greeks and people from some 20 other nations including Germany, the US, France, Sweden and Russia.
"They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used," said Greek activist Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the ship Sfendoni.
Gielalis, who also returned home Tuesday, said the boat's captain was beaten for refusing to leave the wheel and a cameraman filming the raid was hit with a rifle butt in the eye by Israeli soldiers.
"Of course we weren't prepared for a situation of war," he told reporters.
German lawmaker Hoeger said the women aboard the Marmara were locked into a big room below deck during the raid — but it was not clear if Israeli soldiers or activists had locked them away.
"Later, the Israeli soldiers let us go outside, one by one," Hoeger recalled. "We were checked and our personal belongings were taken away. Then we were handcuffed with cable retainers and brought to the upper deck." "They were obviously looking for weapons. They raided and slashed all the suitcases of all passengers and everything was all over the place," Hoeger said.
Aris Papadokostopoulos, who was aboard the ship Free Mediterranean that carried mainly Greek and Swedish activists, said the flotilla was about 80 miles (130 kilometers) off the coast of Gaza in international waters when the raid occurred.
"The Turkish ship was in front of us ... on which there was a terrible raid from the air and from the sea and from everywhere, with shooting," he said.
Aboard the other boats, he said, commandos beat activists, but nobody was gravely injured. He said no one resisted the Israeli soldiers who boarded the Free Mediterranean, which was carrying a cargo of wheelchairs, building materials and medicine.
"Some people were hit by clubs and electric shocks," he said.
Activists from Greece and Germany said the Israeli Army demanded that they sign deportation papers and those who refused were taken on buses to prisons in the Negev Desert.
Israeli officials say about 50 of the 679 activists aboard the flotilla were taken to Israel's international airport for deportation. The others, they said, have refused to identify themselves and will remain in detention in a prison in southern Israel.
Civil engineer Thanassis Petrogiannis said he had joined the flotilla to help rebuild destroyed Palestinian homes.
He said while in Israeli custody, authorities had demanded he sign a paper written in Hebrew. He refused and was eventually given another document that he signed.
"Everyone who didn't sign is in jail," he said.
The German Foreign Office said it was still trying to track down six citizens and Greece was demanding that other Greek citizens still in custody be repatriated as soon as possible.
Turkey sent three ambulance planes to Israel to pick up 20 more Turkish activists who were wounded in the operation.
