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Welcome to Palestine Today, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for Tuesday, June 1, 2010.
The UN Security council demands an impartial, independent investigation into the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla and the Turkish Prime Minister harshly criticizes Israel, these stories and more are coming up, stay tuned.
The News Cast:
In an emergency session that began Monday afternoon and continued into Tuesday morning, the representatives of the UN Security Council discussed a response to Israel’s violent raid against the Freedom Flotilla on Monday.
The final outcome of the meeting included this call for an independent investigation of the Israeli attack, which left a number of people dead – due to the Israeli media blackout and censorship of the incident, the exact number of dead and their identities is not known at this time.
A number of countries have issued strong condemnations of the Israeli raid and Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel. Greece, Sweden, France, Austria, Spain, China and Russia all issued statements condemning the Israeli attack. These countries have also summoned the Israeli ambassadors for an explanation of Israel’s actions.
On his part, Receb Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of Turkey, severely slammed Israel for the attack. The attack will leave a permanent mark on the relations between Israel and Turkey. Erdogan who described the attack as a “Bloody Massacre” said, that this day is a turning point in history, nothing will be the same again.
CNN reported that a high ranking Turkish official said that Turkish Navy boats will escort the next flotilla to break the siege on Gaza in order to prevent any possible Israeli attacks.
The Israeli attack violated a number of articles of the UN convention on the Law of the Sea, as it intercepted the boats in high seas. According the law, no state may validly purport to subject any part of the high seas to its sovereignty, and every state, whether coastal or land-locked, has the right to sail ships flying its flag on the high seas.
In the meantime, an American Activist was hit in the face with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops who attempted to disperse a demonstration condemning the Israeli attack on the freedom flotilla in Ramallah
Emily Henochowicz, 21, was taken to the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem where she is undergoing surgery to remove her left eye.
According to eyewitnesses, an Israeli soldier shot Henochowicz directly in the face during the demonstration at Qalandia checkpoint. Israeli troops fired volleys of tear gas at unarmed Palestinian and international protesters, causing panic amongst the demonstrators and Palestinian workers lined up at the checkpoint.
In the Gaza Strip, five Palestinians fighters were killed by Israeli army fire. Two of them were shot during clashes with Israeli troops near the city of Khan Younis while the three others died as the Israeli military shelled an area they reside in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Medical sources reported that the bodies of the three fighters arrived to the hospital mutilated.
Conclusion
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