00:00The flotilla poses no threat to Israel as Madrid sends a naval vessel to a Gaza-bound flotilla that's come under drone attack in international waters this week.
00:11The Spanish Foreign Ministry says the 50 or so vessels that make up the convoy are a threat to nobody, including Israel.
00:20Italy has also deployed a naval ship to assist the flotilla in an unprecedented move by European governments.
00:27Well, we can speak now with one of the activists on board the flotilla, Sarah Clancy from Galway in Ireland.
00:35Sarah, thanks so much for speaking with us on the programme.
00:38Firstly, tell us exactly where you are now and when the flotilla is hoping to reach Gaza.
00:46Sure. So, yeah, thanks for having me on, first of all, and hello to all of your viewers.
00:51So, we're just currently sailing slowly down the coast of Greece at the moment, and tomorrow morning early, we expect to be leaving for the last leg of our journey to Gaza.
01:03So, that last leg of the journey will, if we have no delays and we don't experience any incidents or anyone trying to prevent us from going,
01:11that last leg of the journey would probably take around about four and a half days.
01:16While the travel times might seem long, it's worth maybe reminding your viewers that we are in a 50-strong flotilla.
01:24So, basically, the flotilla can only move as fast as our slowest boat.
01:29So, we have a variety of vessels.
01:31We have everything from trawlers to sailing vessels to, you know, bigger, sturdier boats.
01:36So, we have an array of boats, but our speed is the speed of the slowest boat at any given time.
01:43So, around about four and a half to five days, we'd expect to reach Gaza and hope to open a humanitarian corridor for aid directly into the hands of the Palestinians of Gaza.
01:55And, Sarah, you mentioned an incident, the convoy, the vessels were, of course, hit by a drone attack earlier this week.
02:02You've described that as an act of piracy.
02:05What exactly happened?
02:06And do you know any more about why those drones were launched in the first place?
02:11So, this flotilla, since the flotilla set sail, I left from Barcelona with the flotilla almost a month ago at this stage.
02:20And we've been subjected to two separate nights of drone attack.
02:25So, the first one happened in Tunis.
02:27The boats were anchored off Tunis in Tunisia.
02:30And two boats were explosive.
02:33Explosives were dropped on two different boats, the family and Alma, two of the key ships in our flotilla that carry probably some of the best-known participants, such as, say, Greta Thunberg or Diego from Brazil and so on.
02:44So, those two were attacked.
02:47And those boats, they dropped an incendiary device which exploded on the deck of each boat in those cases and immediately burst into flames, really high-temperature flames.
02:57So, I'll say high-temperature flames, high enough to burn at 300 degrees and consume fire-retardant life jackets in less than a minute.
03:06So, locally, locally for our participants, nobody was harmed in those.
03:10The passengers reacted according to their training, took fire extinguishers and succeeded in putting out the fires on boats.
03:18But just to say, those two particular attacks which happened in Tunis were highly dangerous because, obviously, boats contained a lot of flammable liquid and so on.
03:27So, they just as easily could have ended in an inferno as in the safe way in which both incidents were handled.
03:35So, that was the first one.
03:36Then, the night before last, while we were sailing, our convoy was all sailing together.
03:41So, we're quite an impressive sight, if you saw it, in the daytime.
03:45And we had been, for two or three nights before that, we had been accompanied by drones.
03:50Now, we didn't know whose drones those were.
03:52Like, as I speak to you at the moment, there are four drones that I'm watching circling above us.
03:56We don't know who those drones belonged to.
03:58It could be the Greek Coast Guard.
03:59It could be anyone.
04:00However, on this particular night, instead of circling high in the skies, the drones started to descend, turn their lights off,
04:09and basically launch projectiles at different boats in our fleet.
04:13So, a total of 12 boats were hit in that attack, and the attack lasted around about three hours.
04:22So, as you can imagine, this wasn't insignificant.
04:25The drones were circling.
04:25It happened between one and around about 3.45 in the morning.
04:29So, it was pitch dark.
04:31Our boat, the Spectre, which I'm travelling on now, our boat was the last to be hit.
04:35They seemed to be aiming mostly at sailboats.
04:38So, we have a lot of sailboats in our vessels, and they seemed to be aiming at the sails of sailboats.
04:44So, it seemed maybe this time an attempt to sabotage the sailboats so that they couldn't sail.
04:49So, in a couple of cases, they did, in fact, do that, but we've managed to make repairs, and all the boats are still travelling with us.
04:55So, for example, they damaged the masts and the mainsails of a couple of the sailing boats.
05:00Now, just to say that on our boat, because that's the one I was closest to, I can tell you what happened.
05:04At the time, we all take shifts steering the boat, and I was on the shift steering the boat.
05:10And so, three separate drones dropped devices onto our boat in the course of about 20, 25 minutes.
05:18The first one fell into the sea, fairly harmlessly into the sea, but we were aware something had hit.
05:24A drone had descended, turned its lights off.
05:26We heard the drone, and something fell on the roof.
05:28Then, a short time later, the next one that fell on the roof exploded, and a noxious smell, like, you know, a really sulfurous, bad egg smell,
05:36went the whole way through the vessel with 21 people on this vessel.
05:39So, even though it landed on the roof, which is upstairs and outdoors, the smell and the kind of fumes came down through the whole boat.
05:48And then the third one, the same thing happened again.
05:51So, there was a stairway behind me, and one of the drones hit just above the stairway.
05:57And so, for example, the area which I was in was filled with that sort of sulfuric gas.
06:03Now, nobody was harmed.
06:05We don't know what their intention was with this sulfuric gas.
06:09The remnants of the projectiles that we found on the various boats seem to have been a kind of an improvised IUD attached to a balloon,
06:20a thick white balloon which obviously contained some sort of noxious substance.
06:24Now, we are speculating.
06:26We're only speculating, but we're speculating this is something, some sort of acidic material designed to damage the sails on the boats.
06:33Our boat doesn't have a sail.
06:35So, you know, for that reason, we're not 100% certain why ours was targeted.
06:40So, that's what happened.
06:41You know, following that, the drones, as daylight approached, the drones headed away,
06:46and we kind of regrouped.
06:48We had to wash down the whole upper surface of our boat, as you can imagine,
06:51because we didn't know what the substance was, all the other boats.
06:54We were all in touch with all of the other boats.
06:56And as we resumed radio contact, just to say that they had, first of all, jammed our VHS radio
07:02and were playing ABBA music over the radio so that nobody could communicate with each other.
07:07However, we have other means of communicating, you know,
07:09and we were in touch across all the boats.
07:12So, we were able to tell what was happening.
07:14We were lucky enough in our boat, we were lucky enough because we were very close
07:18to the last boat that was targeted, we had realised that, you know,
07:23we had realised that we weren't actually being bombed as such, you know,
07:27that it was some other form of damage or harm that was being done to the boats
07:31than actually an explosive intending to sink the boat.
07:34So, we were probably calmer than the first few people that were targeted.
07:37So, that's what happened on Wednesday night.
07:39Last night, all was quiet.
07:40And today, the boat sailed in along the coast of Breeze for the remainder of that night.
07:46And today, all the boats regrouped and we've refuelled and done water and got supplies
07:50and everything that we need and are ready to set sail again tomorrow.
07:54Just one other...
07:55Sorry to cut across you there.
07:58We are just out of time, though.
08:00We do wish you all the best with that.
08:01Hopefully, you will get sailing soon.
08:04Thanks so much for being with us on the programme, though.
08:06We might check in with you again over the next few days to see how you're getting on.
08:10That is one of the activists...
08:11Thank you very much for having us.
08:12Thanks so much.
08:13That's Sarah Clancy, one of the activists on board that Gaza-bound flotilla.
Be the first to comment