Israelis use Tasers on peace boat

Newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Dr Zvia Shapira, the mother of an Israeli campaigners, who said her son Yonatan had told her that the activists "were Tasered in their arms and legs."

Mr Shapira was being held at the Ashdod police station along with the two other Israeli campaigners aboard the ship, and their friends and families had staged a rally outside.

Dr Shapira called her son "a true Israeli patriot.

"He knows that the Israeli government is doing something unthinkable with this blockade and that we won't be able to end the conflict like that."

The Estelle left Naples on October 7 with 30 passengers from eight different countries.

They were accompanying a cargo of olive trees, cement, wheelchairs, crutches, footballs, toys, children's books and musical instruments.

But soldiers boarded the aid ship 30 nautical miles off the Gazan coast, before taking it to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Ahead of its arrival there, Israeli peace activists gathered on a nearby beach holding signs that read: "End the siege of Gaza" and "Blockade = war crime."

A coalition of Israeli rights groups including the Coalition of Women for Peace, Yesh Gvul and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel said: "We oppose Israeli policy, which seeks to maintain its control through siege and closure, strangulating the Palestinian people."

Among those aboard were MPs Ricardo Sixto Iglesias from Spain, Sven Britton from Sweden, Aksel Hagen of Norway, and Vangelis Diamandopoulos and Dimitris Kodelas, both from Greece.

Activist spokeswoman Victoria Strand said Israel had carried out a "demonstration of ruthlessness," while Hamas called it an act of "piracy."