A screengrab from a live stream video shows Israeli navy forces aboard the Gaza-bound vessel Oxygono, part of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which flotilla organisers report has been intercepted, October 2, 2025. [Global Sumud Flotilla/Handout via Reuters]
Israeli forces have stopped 13 boats – including the Greek Oxygono (Oxygen) – carrying foreign activists and aid bound for Gaza, but 30 boats are continuing to sail towards the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave, flotilla organizers said on Thursday.
A video from the Israeli foreign ministry verified by Reuters showed the most prominent of the flotilla’s passengers, Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, sitting on a deck surrounded by soldiers.
“Several vessels of the Hamas-Sumud flotilla have been safely stopped and their passengers are being transferred to an Israeli port,” the Israeli foreign ministry said on X. “Greta and her friends are safe and healthy.”
The Global Sumud Flotilla, transporting medicine and food to Gaza, consists of more than 40 civilian boats with about 500 parliamentarians, lawyers and activists.
The flotilla put out several videos on Telegram with messages from individuals aboard the various boats, some holding their passports and claiming they were abducted and taken to Israel against their will, and reiterating that their mission was a non-violent humanitarian cause.
A post on social media from marchtogaza_greece described the operation as “an act of international piracy, in violation of International Law and the Law of the Sea.”
“Our comrades are being abducted at this very moment and taken against their will to an unknown location. We demand that the Greek government guarantee their immediate and safe return to the country,” it added
Earlier, Peti Perka, an MP with the New Left who was on board the Oxygono, posted a video on Instagram in which she said Israeli warships had appeared:
“For a moment, we believed – we wanted to believe – that tomorrow at noon we would be in Gaza, able to embrace the children waiting for us. Unfortunately, as we anticipated, four miles ahead of the lead vessels, Israeli warships have now appeared. So we are waiting for them to come to us as well.”
The flotilla is the most high-profile symbol of opposition to Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
Its progress across the Mediterranean Sea garnered international attention as nations including Turkey, Spain and Italy sent boats or drones in case their nationals required assistance, even as it triggered repeated warnings from Israel to turn back.
Turkey’s foreign ministry called Israel’s “attack” on the flotilla “an act of terror” that endangered the lives of innocent civilians.
Israel’s navy had previously warned the flotilla it was approaching an active combat zone and violating a lawful blockade, and asked them to change course. It had offered to transfer any aid peacefully through safe channels to Gaza.
The flotilla is the latest sea-borne attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza, much of which has been turned into a wasteland by almost two years of war.
The flotilla’s organizers denounced Wednesday’s raid as a “war crime.” They said the military used aggressive tactics, including the use of water cannon, but that no one was harmed.
“Multiple vessels … were illegally intercepted and boarded by Israeli Occupation Forces in international waters,” the organizers said in a statement.
The boats were about 70 nautical miles off the war-ravaged enclave when they were intercepted, inside a zone that Israel is policing to stop any boats approaching. The organizers said their communications had been scrambled, including the use of a live camera feed from some of the boats. According to the flotilla’s ship tracking data, 13 boats had been intercepted or stopped as of early Thursday. Organizers have remained defiant, saying in a statement that the flotilla “will continue undeterred.”
Thirty boats were still sailing towards Gaza, flotilla organizers said in a post on Telegram early on Thursday, stating they were 46 nautical miles away from their destination.
The flotilla had hoped to arrive in Gaza on Thursday morning if it was not intercepted.
Israeli officials have repeatedly denounced the mission as a stunt. “This systematic refusal (to hand over the aid) demonstrates that the objective is not humanitarian, but provocative,” Jonathan Peled, the Israeli ambassador to Italy, said in a post on X.
Israel has imposed a naval blockade on Gaza since Hamas took control of the coastal enclave in 2007 and there have been several previous attempts by activists to deliver aid by sea.
In 2010, nine activists were killed after Israeli soldiers boarded a flotilla of six ships manned by 700 pro-Palestinian activists from 50 countries. In June this year, Israeli naval forces detained Thunberg and 11 crew members from a small ship organized by a pro-Palestinian group called the Freedom Flotilla Coalition as they approached Gaza.
Israel began its Gaza offensive after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken as hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. The offensive has killed over 65,000 people in Gaza, Gaza health authorities say. [Reuters/AMNA]