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A spokesperson for a group trying to break the Israeli navy blockade of Gaza to deliver aid says two Canadians who were detained by Israel in the Mediterranean Sea have been released.
The Global Sumud Flotilla identified the Canadians as Marie Tota and Umir Tiar.
Tota is a nurse from Ontario and Tiar is a student from Quebec City, said Global Sumud Canada spokesperson Safa Chebbi.
Chebbi says she has been told by the group’s organizer on the ground in Greece that both Canadians were in hospital for medical checkups.
The activists were part of a second Global Sumud flotilla launched in recent months in an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza by delivering humanitarian assistance. The ships set sail from the Spanish port of Barcelona on April 12.
Luiza Noura, a third Canadian, was rescued by Greenpeace and Spanish NGO Open Arms after her boat was destroyed and she was left adrift in the sea, the organization said.
Chebbi says Tota, Tiar and Noura were among the nearly 180 activists whose boats were intercepted this week by the Israeli navy in international waters, hundreds of kilometres from Gaza.
Israel says it has released all but two activists: a Spanish-Swedish citizen of Palestinian origin and a Brazilian citizen who were taken in for questioning.
Israel has intercepted about 50 aid ships heading for Gaza in international waters near Greece, organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla say.
In a video posted on social media after her release, Tiar said the captives were held in inhumane conditions on a ship where floors were deliberately flooded, and some of them were randomly taken into isolation.
“Some people were beaten, shot at by rubber bullets, some people were dragged on the floor by their arms and by their neck,” she said.
A statement from Tota released by Global Sumud Canada says she was subjected to physical and psychological abuse “all for the so-called crime of attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.”
Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to the activists’ accusations, but its foreign minister Gideon Saar said on Thursday that activists were taken off flotilla vessels “unharmed.”
