Victims of Israel flotilla raid identified

ISTANBUL - Eight of the nine people killed in Monday’s Israeli raid on an aid flotilla heading to Gaza have been identified as Turks, Turkish media reported Thursday.

The other victim is an American of Turkish origin, according to the reports.

The bodies were flown to Turkey Thursday. Funerals for several of the victims are scheduled to be held in Istanbul later in the day.

Turkey and Israel’s once strategic alliance has mostly come undone following the deadly raid.

“Israel is about to lose its most important friend in the region if it does not change this mentality,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Thursday, speaking at a meeting of the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly in Ankara.

“As long as children are killed, schools and hospitals are bombed and volunteers carrying humanitarian aid to the region are massacred, prosperity and stability cannot be ensured in the region,” he added.

Erdogan also pledged that Turkey “will not ignore and turn a blind eye in the face of this brutality.”

The head of Insan Yardim Vakfi (IHH), the Turkish non-governmental organisation that was the main sponsor of the aid flotilla, meanwhile said Thursday that his organisation will continue to try and break Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza.

“We will continue until the embargo is lifted, and we will make the entire world take action from the sea and land with bigger convoys to end the embargo,” IHH chairman Bulent Yildirim said at Istanbul’s airport, after returning from Israel.

Yildirim had been detained by Israeli authorities after being taken from the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship that was the scene of a violent confrontation between Israeli commandos and activists.

He said several passengers that were on board are still missing.

The activists defended themselves against the Israeli special forces with iron rods, Yildirim said. He conceded that activists also seized some of the Israelis’ weapons, but said they threw them overboard rather than using them.

“Even if we had used them, it would have been self-defence,” he said.