A drone allegedly dropped an incendiary device on a vessel in the Global Sumud Flotilla, organizers said on Tuesday, a day after Tunisian authorities rejected the story of an initial drone attack.
A ball of flame descended onto the deck of the Alma overnight while it was docked in the city of Sidi Bou Said, according to a statement and video shared by the GSF on Instagram, resulting in a small fire that was soon extinguished. No passengers or crew were harmed, and the vessel did not suffer any structural damage.
The GSF shared images of the charred remains of what was alleged to be an incendiary device dropped onto their ship by a drone.
“This marks the second such attack in two days,” the GSF said in a statement. “These repeated attacks come during intensified Israeli aggression on Palestinians in Gaza, and are an orchestrated attempt to distract and derail our mission.”
The first alleged incident occurred on Monday night. Footage of the Sidi Bou Said incident was shared by the GSF on social media, showing activists panicking after flames rose from the vessel Family’s main and storage decks. All crew and passengers, including the flotilla’s steering committee members who were on the ship, were unharmed.
While some activists implied that Israel was responsible for the supposed attack, the Tunisian Interior Ministry rejected information circulating about the incident as having “no basis in truth.”
The ministry said on Facebook that a life jacket appeared to have caught fire first, and then the flames spread to nearby emergency flotation devices.
According to the Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf, local authorities said that it was a cigarette butt that had caused the fire.
Activist Thiago Avila said on Wednesday that despite the incidents, the flotilla would continue on its mission to run the Israeli blockade around Gaza to create a “humanitarian corridor.” The flotilla is set to depart from Tunisia soon, after having meant initially to rendezvous with other ships from Tunisia, Italy, and Greece on September 4.
As the flotilla of dozens of vessels has advanced, it has made claims about being stalked by drones.
Drones hovering
At 90 nautical miles from the Island of Menorca, for example, the Sumud committee organizer, Yasemin Acar, said that each vessel in the flotilla had a drone hovering above it, surveilling it.
In a June blockade run by a previous Gaza flotilla, activist Greta Thunberg panicked when her ship, the Madleen, was approached by Greek Coast Guard drones. In May, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition claimed that one of its vessels was attacked by a drone off the shores of Malta.
The latest flotilla, which set sail from Barcelona last Sunday, has been plagued with technical and environmental difficulties that have delayed the journey. Earlier Tuesday, five of its smaller ships had to turn back to port amid turbulent weather. The storm allegedly also knocked out communications between the vessels.