Israel moved swiftly yesterday to deport hundreds of activists detained during a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, as world pressure mounted for a full investigation into the catastrophe.
Kuwait lawmaker Waleed Al Tabtabai vowed to return to Gaza with humanitarian aid hours after he was released by the Israelis who detained him during the Freedom Flotilla raid.
"I will go back to Gaza to support the Palestinians. What the Israeli forces did was pure piracy and I refused to answer questions during their investigation with me," the MP said upon his arrival in Jordan before his transfer alongside 15 Kuwaitis to Kuwait City.
The accelerated deportations came after two days of calls by global leaders on Israel to release the detainees who were taken off six aid ships that were raided by Israeli commandos on Monday in which 16 passengers were killed. More than 120 people, mostly Algerians and Indonesians, were escorted by military police to the border with Jordan early yesterday, Israeli officials said.
Jordan's state-run Petra news agency said 126 people had crossed the border including 30 Jordanians as well as nationals from Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, Syria, Algeria, Oman, Yemen, Mauritania, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Azerbaijan.
Some 130 Turkish nationals were waiting at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv to catch special flights home, while another 74 were en route to the airport, immigration police spokeswoman Sabine Hadad told AFP. Of the 682 people from 42 countries aboard the six ships that were towed to an Israeli port after Monday's bloody raid, 45 had already been flown out by Tuesday.
— with inputs from AFP
