Iranian flotilla leaving for Gaza
By JPOST.COM STAFF, ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAST UPDATED: 06/14/2010 16:23
Half will be sent through Istanbul; Iranian MPs will fly to Gaza.
Workers unloaded aid packages. Photo: AP
Two Iranian cargoes of humanitarian aid for Gaza will
leave next
week and one of them will be shipped through Istanbul, the official
Iranian news agency, IRNA reported Monday.
The announcement
quoted Mohammad Ali Nouraee,
an aid official, who said one
cargo will be sent to Turkey, and then shipped
to Gaza from Istanbul while the other will leave from the
port of Khorramshahr.
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Nouraee said that the ships would sail without protective
security because the Iranians “do not want to fight", however he
emphasized that "we are willing to become martyred in this way.”
According to IRNA, a senior official of the the Islamic Revolutionary
Guards, Deputy
Commander Hossein Salami, has said that escorting the two cargo ships
"was not on the guards agenda."
In addition three Iranian parliamentarians are planning to visit Gaza
through Egypt, Iranian news agencies reported Monday.
Lawmaker Mahmoud Ahmadi Bighash was quoted as saying that he and two
other members of the Majlis, the Iranian parliament, would travel to
Gaza by way of Egypt later this week.
Bighash said that some 200 out of the 290 Iranian MPs had wanted to make
the visit but the three-man team will go instead. He said that the
Egyptians had expressed willingness to allow the Iranians to enter Gaza
through the Rafah crossing.
Iranian MP Mahmoud Ahmadi-Biqash said on Sunday that the Egyptian
government has agreed to issue visas to 70 Iranian parliamentarians who
have registered to travel to the Gaza Strip.
The Iranian efforts to aid Gaza are inspired by the recent Gaza-bound
flotilla, during which an Israeli effort to take control of the Turkish
ship Mavi Marmara resulted in
the death of nine Turkish activists.