Seven Irish activists have been \u201ckidnapped\u201d after Israel intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla, its organisers have said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the group said 22 Irish people are involved in the flotilla and described it as a \u201ca peaceful humanitarian mission bringing aid and aiming to break the siege on Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n
They said their boats were in international waters off the coast of the Greek island Crete when Israeli authorities \u201crammed\u201d and boarded their vessels.<\/p>\n
\n People were forcibly removed, they were kidnapped. We do not know where they are right now<\/p>\n
Karen Moynihan, Irish Global Sumud Delegation\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Seven Irish participants were taken \u201calong with hundreds of others\u201d Karen Moynihan, head of the Irish Global Sumud Delegation, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey attacked the flotilla, rammed boats, boarded boats with guns\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were forcibly removed, they were kidnapped.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do not know where they are right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Irish citizens who were taken have been named as Catriona Graham, Fiacc O\u2019Brolchain, Robert Murphy, Colm Byrne, Martin Guilfoyle, Michael Fix and John Connellan.<\/p>\n
President Catherine Connolly\u2019s sister is part of the flotilla, but is not believed to be among the activists being held.<\/p>\n
A video of Dr Margaret Connolly, on board a boat, was posted to Instagram on Wednesday night along with a caption which said \u201csurrounding boats\u201d were being intercepted.<\/p>\n
In the video she says \u201cplease call for our release, the release of all Palestinian hostages, should we be attacked and abducted tonight\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Global Sumud Flotilla have organised a protest outside Leinster House on Thursday evening to call on the Government to \u201cdo everything they can to protect the safe passage of the humanitarian mission, and protect Irish participants from illegal Israeli aggression\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seven Irish activists have been \u201ckidnapped\u201d after Israel intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla, its organisers have said. A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-462833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116498089062764199","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}