An American of Turkish origin was one of the nine activists killed during Israel's raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, a U.S. official said Thursday.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the victim was Furkan Dogan, 19 years old, and that U.S. authorities in Turkey had met with Mr. Dogan's father to express condolences and to offer U.S. consular services, the Associated Press reported. She added that two other American citizens had been injured in raid and in a subsequent protest and the U.S. was seeking information about all three from Israel, AP reported.
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Injured activist Almahti Alharati is taken to a hospital in Turkey after arriving from Israel. Hundreds of activists were flown back to Turkey early Thursday morning.
"Protecting the welfare of American citizens is a fundamental responsibility of our government and one that we take very seriously,'' she told reporters. "We are in constant contact with the Israeli government attempting to obtain more information about our citizens.''
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Mr. Dogan, who was born in Troy, N.Y., and held dual U.S-Turkish citizenship, had died of "gunshot wounds" but he declined to confirm reports that he had been shot multiple times in the head, AP reported. Mr. Crowley said U.S. consular officials had seen Mr. Dogan's body in a morgue in Israel before it was taken to Turkey but had not known he was a dual citizen at the time.
Mr. Dogan's father told Turkey's state-run Anatolia News Agency that he had identified his son's body and that he had been shot through the forehead. Still, he said, the family was not sad because they believed Mr. Dogan had died with honor.
"I feel my son has been blessed with heaven," he said. "I am hoping to be a father worthy of my son.''
Senior U.S. officials said Thursday that the Obama administration would "redouble" its efforts to get Israel to ease the siege on the Gaza strip. But these officials indicated the White House wasn't going to ask Prime Minister Netanyahu to formally end the blockade.
Rather, these officials said they believed there were ways to accelerate the introduction of important goods into Gaza, such as construction materials and food, while still allowing Israel to guard against the smuggling of weapons.
"We don't think it's in Israel's interest to maintain the status quo," Mr. Crowley said. But he added: "Given the history and reality, Israel has a very legitimate interest to inspect and control the flow of materials into Gaza."
Mrs. Clinton said no decision had yet been made about how to handle Mr. Dogan's death but renewed calls for Israel to "conduct a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation that conforms to international standards and gets to all the facts surrounding this tragic event."
"We are open to different ways to assuring that it is a credible investigation, including urging appropriate international participation," she told AP.
In Istanbul, about 10,000 mourners buried eight of the activists, with a further service due for a Turkish journalist who also was killed on the Mavi Marmara.
The crowd prayed before eight Turkish and Palestinian flag-draped coffins lined up in a row outside Istanbul's Fatih mosque in a traditional service for the dead, AP reported.
"Our friends have been massacred,'' Bulent Yildirim, the head of the Islamic charity group IHH that organized the flotilla, told the crowd.
Earlier in the day, hundreds of humanitarian-aid activists detained by Israeli commandos on their Gaza-bound flotilla returned to Istanbul, with crowds waving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israeli slogans. Some of those returning Thursday said more had died but were missing. They were unable, however, to name any of the missing.
By 3 a.m., as the activists boarded buses on the airport tarmac, a jubilant crowd of several thousand Turks had gathered to meet them, pushing through police cordons to reach the airport perimeter fence.
"Turkey is proud of you," "God is great" and "Zionist dogs will pay for this," the crowd chanted.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said nine bodies were on the planes, Israel's first indication, since the raid to halt the flotilla turned violent early Monday morning, that the dead were from Turkey. According to several news reports, one of those killed was a Turkish-American carrying a U.S. passport. U.S. officials had not confirmed the reports.
Activists on board a Gaza-bound flotilla return home to cheering crowds. Video courtesy of Reuters.
Turkey's energy minister, Taner Yildiz told reporters in Istanbul that Turkey was suspending all consideration of state to state energy and water projects with Israel, according to the Turkish IHA news agency. Mr. Yildiz said projects would be suspended until after relations with with Israel were normalized, the agency said. He named one project to deliver 50 million cubic meters of water per year, and another to extend the projected Blue Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Turkey to Israel.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has condemned Israel for the incident, and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, had said early Wednesday that Turkey would review its ties with Israel if all Turks weren't released by the end of the day.
"If the Israelis do not lift the embargo on Gaza, we will form much larger flotillas in cooperation with NGOs from Europe and all over the world and we will send them both by sea and through Egypt, said Bulent Yildirim, leader of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH, which owns the Mavi Marmara, in a speech from an open-topped bus. Mr. Yildirim was on the Mavi Marmara when the Israeli commandos boarded.
Most of the activists were whisked away upon arrival in their buses without stopping. IHH organizers said they were being taken for medical checks.
The group of IHH leaders and foreign-language speakers that stopped to soak up the crowd's adulation and speak to the media appeared tired but victorious. They had conflicting accounts of what happened. Abdi Mahdi, a 30-year-old freelance photographer from Walthamstow London, said he was praying on the Mavi Marmara's deck with about 100 others when the Israelis attacked.
Mr. Mahdi first said they had all scattered "to look after each other" when the Israeli commandos pulled along side in dinghies and fired tear gas canisters on board without warning. He then acknowledged that the activists fought "with whatever we could find," adding that it was in self-defense. Mr. Mahdi spoke alongside several other Britons who held flowers they were given and punched the air before the jubilant crowd.
Gene St. Onge, a 63-year-old structural engineer from Oakland, Calif., was on the ship Sfendoni, behind the Mavi Marmara. Nobody fought on his boat, he said, but they tried to resist by blocking the wheelhouse with their bodies and holding onto the wheel. Israeli commandos pushed him down several times, Mr. Onge said, sporting a cut in his forehead. He said one person was hit in the head with a rifle butt while the ship's Greek captain suffered a burst ear drum and other injuries.
Mr. Onge said he saw the start of the fight on the Mavi Marmara. Eight to ten commandos standing in each small boat sought to scale the sides of the ship, but were driven away with fire hoses and objects tossed at them from above, he said. He said he wasn't able to see the rest.
Asked why people fought only on the Mavi Marmara, he said: "Well, they are Turkish."
"Feelings are stronger here," he explained, nodding at the roaring crowd. "Some might say they went too far, but they were protecting their boat in international waters. The point is, who attacked first? We were not spies, we had no weapons."
He said the detainees were treated roughly, given little food and allowed little sleep. They were questioned repeatedly by Israeli officers, he said. "Initially I think they were trying to flush out if we were Al Qaeda or something, but when it became obvious we weren't it was just a form of collective punishment I think.
Mr. Netanyahu, in a statement broadcast from his office, defended the operation Wednesday, saying terrorists affiliated with Hamas were to blame for the violence on board the Turkish-owned passenger ship, the Mavi Marmara. "This was not the Love Boat, it was the Hate Boat," he said.
The Free Gaza Movement, the Cyprus-based lead organizer of the flotilla, which was primarily manned and funded by the Turkish IHH charity, rejected the statement, saying Turkey had vetted all passengers to make sure none had ties to extremist groups and an independent security firm had searched the ships for weapons.
Israel's cabinet on Tuesday debated pressing charges against activists for allegedly attacking Israeli commandos after they descended from a helicopter onto the ship, but decided instead to send them home, according to Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
Israel's High Court of Justice considered a petition Wednesday to reverse the decision to forgo criminal procedures, but the petition failed to halt the deportation of activists.
In a statement to the High Court, Israel Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein defended the expulsion, arguing "public, security and diplomatic interests prevail'' over the need for a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, Israel continued to transfer aid from the detained boats into the Gaza Strip, but alleged that Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the territory, was impeding shipments.
The United Nations Security Council called early Tuesday for an "impartial investigation" into the deadly events. While Israel's top ally, the U.S., hasn't backed an international investigation into the incident, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said the U.S. was open to "international participation" in the probe of what happened in the Mediterranean Sea.
The aid flotilla and the outcome of the raid have put Israel under heightened pressure at home and abroad to review its three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday repeated a call for an end to the blockade.
Israel and Egypt began restricting the flow of goods into and out of Gaza in 2007, after Hamas seized control. Critics of the blockade say it has failed to weaken the Hamas government and has kept out crucial aid and basic materials, a claim Israel denies.
Mr. Netanyahu defended the blockade of Gaza Wednesday, saying it is needed to prevent missile attacks against Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He said the aim of the flotilla was to break the blockade, not to bring aid to Gaza. "If the blockade had been broken, it would have been followed by dozens, hundreds of boats," he said. "Each boat could carry hundreds of missiles."
Egypt, which criticized the Israeli raid, opened its border with Gaza to humanitarian aid Tuesday and Wednesday.
Activists on an Irish ship are planning to test the blockade again in the coming days. Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen appealed to Israel to let the ship deliver its aid cargo to Gaza—but he conceded on Wednesday that supplies of concrete on board would pose a particular stumbling block because Israel considers it of military use.
The ship was supposed to join the flotilla that Israeli commandos intercepted Monday, but was delayed by mechanical problems.
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