Israel Flotilla Raid

More from the Guardian

3.53pm:

More reaction from those caught up in the flotilla violence. Tom Phillips is in Rio de Janeiro for the Guardian.

The Brazilian filmmaker Iara Lee, who was onboard the Mavi Marmara when it was stormed, claimed the Israeli troops had invaded the ship and "started shooting at people."

"It was a surprise because it happened in the middle of the night, in the darkness, in international waters, because we knew there would be a confrontation but not in international waters," she told Brazil's TV Globo on Tuesday.

"Their first tactic was to cut all of our satellite communications and then they attacked," Lee said, reportedly speaking from an Israeli prison in the city of Beersheva, 80km from Jerusalem, where she was under arrest.

"All I witnessed first hand was the shooting," said New York-based Lee, who has also lived in Iran and Lebanon. "They came onboard and started shooting at people."

Lee, a former director of the Sao Paulo film festival and whose film Synthetic Pleasures was nominated for a Sundance award in 1996, said the operatives then sent the women to a lower level of the ship.

"They said we were terrorists – it was absurd. They came into the part where the women were, lots and lots of them, dressed in black and with gigantic weapons as if they were in a war."

"They confiscated all of our telephones and all of our luggage that was on the ship and took everything out of the bags and put it on the floor."

Lee said she planned to return to Brazil and then to the US where she would continue her activism. "Justice will not come quickly, we will have to continue working," she said.

3.41pm:

The civil society organisation Avaaz has set up a petition calling for a full investigation into the flotilla incident and an end to the Gaza blockade.

The petition will be delivered to the UN and world leaders when it reaches 200,000 signatures, according to Avaaz.

"We call for an immediate, independent investigation into the flotilla assault, full accountability for those responsible, and the lifting of the Gaza blockade," the organisation says.

The petition has attracted 14,000 signatures in the last couple of hours and is growing fast.
Avaaz petition