“Some 75% of the people in the vessel resisted violently, “each one with a knife in his hand”…

(Ynet)- In the first interview since he was wounded in Monday’s raid on the flotilla, Captain R, who commanded the troops who boarded the Marmara via helicopter, spoke of the battle that took place on vessel.

According to R, hundreds of people who were on the boat took part in attacking him and his soldiers and they were forced to use weapons because of danger to their lives.

“Dozens of people beat each soldier on the roof (of the vessel),” he said from his bed in the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

“They wielded clubs, axes and knives,” he said. “I was the second to go down the cable, one of the guys from my group was already down there, and there were a few people on him. At first it was one-on-one, until more soldiers came down.”

Regarding the troops’ preparation for a more extreme scenario on the decks, R said they had prepared for both passive and violent resistance, but admitted he had been surprised by the strength of the resistance.

“We knew they were peace activists,” he said. “Though they wanted to break the Gaza blockade, we thought we’d encounter passive resistance, perhaps verbal resistance – we didn’t expect this. Everyone wanted to kill us. We encountered terrorists who wanted to kill us and we did everything we could to prevent unnecessary injury.”

R said that some 75% of the people in the vessel resisted violently, “each one with a knife in his hand.”

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