Italy, Spain deploy naval vessels to protect flotilla on course for Gaza • FRANCE 24 English

Italy, Spain deploy naval vessels to protect flotilla on course for Gaza • FRANCE 24 English

The flotilla poses no threat to Israel as Madrid sends a naval vessel to a Gazabanned flotilla that’s come under drone attack in international waters this week. The Spanish Foreign Ministry says the 50 or so vessels that make up the convoy are a threat to nobody, including Israel. Italy has also deployed a naval ship to assist the flutilla in an unprecedented move by European governments. Well, we can speak now with one of the activists on board the flatillaa, Sarah Clancy from Gway in Ireland. Sarah, thanks so much for speaking with us on the program. Firstly, tell us exactly where you are now and when the flotillaa is hoping to reach Gaza. Sure. So, yeah, thanks for having me on first of all and hello to all of your viewers. Um we are just currently uh sailing slowly down the coast of Greece um at the at the moment and tomorrow morning early we expect to be leaving for the last leg of our journey to Gaza. So that last leg of the journey will if if we have no delays and we don’t experience any incidents or anyone trying to prevent us from going that last leg of the journey would probably take around about four and a half days. Um the while the travel times might seem long, it’s worth maybe reminding your your viewers that we are in a 50 strong flotilla. So basically the flotilla can only move as fast as our slowest boat. So we have a variety of vessels. We have everything from trollwers to sailing vessels to you know bigger sturdier boats. So we have an array of boats but our speed is the speed of the slowest boat at any given time. So that’s so around about four and a half to five days we’d expect to be to reach Gaza with H or and hope to open a humanitarian corridor for aid directly into the hands of the Palestinians of Gaza. And Sarah, you mentioned an incident uh the convoy the vessels were of course hit by a drone attack earlier this week. You’ve described that as an act of piracy. What exactly happened and do you know any more about why those drones were launched in the first place? So, so th this flotilla since the flotilla set sail I left from Barcelona with the flotilla almost almost a month ago at this stage and we’ve been we’ve been subjected to two separate nights of drone attack. So the first one happened in Tunis. The boats were anchored off Tunis in Tunisia and two boats were were explosives explosives were dropped on two different boats. the family and Alma, two of the key ships in our flotilla that carry probably some of the best known participants such as say Greta Tunberg or Diego from Brazil and so on. So the the those two were attacked um and those boats they dropped an incendiary device which exploded on the deck of each boat in those cases and immediately burst into flames really high temperature flames. So I’ll say high temperature flames high enough to burn at 300° and consume fire retardant life jackets in less than a minute. So luckily luckily for our participants nobody was harmed in those the the the passengers reacted according to their training put out the with took fire extinguishers and succeeded in putting out the fires on boats. But just to say those two particular attacks which happened in Tunis were highly dangerous because obviously boats contain a lot of flammable liquid and so on. So they just as easily could have h ended in an inferno as in the safe way in which both incidents were handled. So that was the first one. Then the night before last while we were sailing our convoy uh was all sailing together. So we’re we’re you know we’re quite an impressive site if you saw us in the daytime and we had been for two or three nights before that. We had been accompanied by drones. Now we didn’t know uh whose drones those were like as I speak to at the moment there are four drones that I’m watching circling above us and we don’t know who those drones belong to. It could be the Greek Coast Guard. It could be anyone. However, on this particular night, instead of circling uh high in the skies, the drones started to descend, turn their lights off, and uh basically launch projectiles at different boats in our fleet. The the so a total of 12 boats were hit on that uh in in that attack. And the attack lasted around about three hours. So, as you can imagine, this wasn’t insignificant. The drones were circling. It happened between 1 and around about 3:45 in the morning. So, it’s pitch dark. Um, the our boat, the Spectre, which I’m traveling on now, that our our boat was the last to be hit. They seem to be aiming mostly at sailboats. So, we’ve a lot of sailboats in our vessels and they seem to be aiming a sails of sailboats. So, it seems maybe this time an attempt to sabotage sailboats so that they couldn’t sail. So, in a couple of cases, they did in fact do that, but we’ve managed to make repairs and all the boats are still traveling with us. So, for example, they damaged the masts and the main sails of a couple of the sailing boats. Now, just to say that on our boat, because that’s the one I was closest to, I can tell you what what happened. At the time, we all take shifts steering the boat. Um, and I was on the shift steering the boat. And so, three separate three separate drones uh dropped devices onto our boat in the course of about 20 25 minutes. The first one fell into the sea, fairly harmlessly into the sea, but we were aware something had hit a drone had descended, turned its lights off. We heard the drone and something fell on the roof. Then a short time later, the next one that fell on the roof, exploded in a noxious smell, like, you know, a really sulfurous bad egg smell went the whole way through the vessel with 21 people on this vessel. So even though it landed on the roof which is upstairs and outdoors um the the smell and the kind of fumes came down through through the whole boat and then the third one the same thing happened again. So just to so there there was a stairway behind me and one of the drones hit just above the stairway and so for example the area which I was in was filled with that sort of sulfuric gas. Um now nobody was harmed. We don’t know what their intention was with this sulfuric gas. The the remnants of the drone, the remnants of the projectiles that we found on the various boats seemed to have been a kind of an improvised IUD attached to a balloon, a thick a thick white balloon, which obviously contained some sort of noxious substance. Now, we’re speculating, we’re only speculating, but we’re speculating this something, some sort of acidic material designed to damage the sails on the boat. our boat doesn’t have a sail. So, you know, for that reason, we’re not 100% certain why why ours was targeted. So, that that’s what happened. You know, following that, the drones as as as daylight approached, the drones headed away and we kind of regrouped, we had to wash down the whole upper surface of our boat, as you can imagine, because we didn’t know what the substance was. all the other boats. We’re all in touch with all all of the other boats and as we resumed radio contact just to say that they had first of all jammed our VHS radio and were playing ABBA music over the radio so that nobody could communicate with each other. However, we have other means of communicating you know so and we were in touch across all the boats. So we were able to tell what was happening. We were lucky enough in in our boat we were lucky enough because we were very close to the last boat that was targeted. We had realized that we, you know, we had realized that we weren’t actually being bombed as such. Um, you know, that that that it was some other form of damage or harm that was being done to the boats than actually an explosive intending to sink the boat. So, we were probably calmer than the first few people that were targeted. So, that that’s what happened on Wednesday night. Last night, all was quiet and today the the boat sailed in along the coast of Greece for the remainder of that night. And today all the boats regrouped and we’ve refueled and done water and got supplies and everything that we need and are ready to set sail again tomorrow. Just one other Sorry to sorry to cut across you there. We are just out of time though. We do wish you all the best with that. Hopefully you will get sailing soon. Thanks so much for being with us on the program though. We might check in with you again over the next few days to see how you’re getting on. That is one of the Thank you very much for having us. Thanks so much. that Sarah Clansancy, one of the activists on board that Gaza bound flotillaa.

Spain and Italy say they are sending navy ships to where a flotilla of boats carrying activists seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza is sailing, after the activists said they were attacked by drones near Greece.FRANCE 24’s Sharon Gaffney speaks to one of the activists on board, Sarah Clancy from Galway in Ireland.
#Israel #Gaza #flotilla

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