PAUL MCGEOUGH
Confrontation on the high seas
Paul McGeough reports live as Israeli boats jam electronic signals and troops move against the Gaza protest flotilla.
BREAKING NEWS: Ten people have reportedly been killed and more than 30 injured after Israeli forces attacked a flotilla seeking to break through a naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Contact with Herald journalist Paul McGeough, who is on board one of the flotilla vessels, has been lost.
This is what McGeough filed earlier before contact with the flotilla was lost ...
Activists sleep and pray on the Turkish passenger ship MV Marmara carrying 600 activists, part of the freedom flotilla headed to Gaza. Photo: Kate Geraghty
11.45pm: For the past hour, we have been observing a series of lights beyond the six sets of lights that are the flotilla ships. Were they non-military sea traffic, or was the Israeli Navy on top of us? Kate Geraghty uses her biggest lens to capture an image of what we can't really see. Blown up, it is too grainy to publish, but at the same time, clearly, it is a navy vessel. There are two on either side of the flotilla, at a distance of more than one kilometre.
A crowd gathers for a meeting at the stern of the MV Marmara passenger boat, part of the Free Gaza flotilla. Photo: Kate Geraghty
10.55pm: Reading the call as intimidation, Free Gaza Movement chairwoman Huwaida Arraf rejected it out of hand.
10.50pm: The Israeli Navy engaged the flotilla, making a radio call to each ship or boat, warning the captains they were not welcome in Israeli waters, and that they were putting themselves, their passengers and their vessels at risk by attempting to proceed to Gaza. (Listen to Paul McGeough's report)
The first call came on a sultry Mediterranean about 10.30pm, with a sky filled with stars and a stunning orange moon reflected off oily waters as those on the ships sensed they were being shadowed.
The MV Challenger I, renamed Samoud, which in Arabic means steadfast, and on which myself and photographer Kate Geraghty are travelling, received its own blunt warning not to proceed.
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