Israel deports 171 Gaza flotilla activists to Greece, Slovakia

Israel on Monday deported 171 more international activists detained aboard an aid flotilla seeking to challenge an illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry statement said that 171 activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, were deported to Greece and Slovakia.

The ministry said the deportees were nationals of Greece, Italy, France, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Austria, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland, Norway, the UK, Serbia, and the United States.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Thunberg told Swedish officials that she had been held in a cell infested with bedbugs and provided with insufficient food and water.

Separately, Turkish activist Ersin Celik told Anadolu that Israeli forces "severely tortured Greta before our eyes" and "made her crawl and made her kiss the Israeli flag."

Israel had earlier deported around 170 flotilla activists over the past few days, most to Istanbul, with smaller groups sent to Italy and Spain, according to the Israeli legal center Adalah.

Israeli naval forces attacked and seized vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla late Wednesday and detained more than 470 activists from over 50 countries. The flotilla had been attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenge Israel’s blockade of the enclave.

Israel has maintained the blockade of Gaza, home to nearly 2.4 million people, for almost 18 years.

Since October 2023, Israeli bombardments have killed more than 67,200 Palestinians in the enclave, most of them women and children, and rendered it uninhabitable, with the blockade also pushing Gaza to famine.