Defiant activist ship steams on towards Gaza

The Rachel Corrie activist cargo ship kept its course yesterday for an arrival in Gaza today - or confrontation - as world anger simmered over Israel's deadly raid on an earlier blockade-busting bid.

"We are not afraid," Irish Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire told Ireland's RTE state radio by satellite phone from aboard the aid-laden ship yesterday.

"We started out to deliver this cargo to the people of Gaza and to break the siege of Gaza, that is what we want to do," the 66-year-old said as the vessel steamed towards the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave.

The MV Rachel Corrie was just hours from Gaza but the 15 aboard - Irish and Malaysian activists, four Indonesian crew and a Scottish captain - did not intend to leave international waters and run the Israeli gauntlet until after daybreak today, organisers said.

With Ireland's Prime Minister warning sternly that the ship must be allowed to reach Gaza, the activists have put Israel in a tight spot at a time when it already faces a serious diplomatic crisis over Monday's botched raid in which its commandos killed nine Turkish activists aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla.

Resentment ran high in Turkey, which sent more than half the almost 700 activists aboard the ill-fated six-ship convoy.

In a statement certain to infuriate Israel, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday he did not view Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

"Hamas are resistance fighters who are struggling to defend their land," Mr Erdogan said in a public speech in the central Turkish city of Konya.

The Islamist movement is committed to the destruction of Israel and is blacklisted in the West as a terrorist group.

In Istanbul, a crowd of some 10,000 people held prayers for a journalist among the nine Turks, one of them also a US citizen, killed in Monday's raid.

Chants of "murderer Israel" echoed across the courtyard of the historic Beyazit Mosque, where a huge banner called for the Israeli embassy to be shut down.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has warned relations with Israel "will never be the same" and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said economic and defence ties will be slashed. In Gaza, Hamas premier Ismail Haniya claimed that the activists had emerged the victors.

"The strategy of the enemy has failed and the strategy of patience has won in Gaza today," he said at the weekly Muslim prayers in Gaza City, flanked by Palestinian and Turkish flags.

"Your message has reached its target," he said.

In Kuala Lumpur, some 5,000 people rallied outside the US embassy, burning Israeli flags and brandishing posters proclaiming "Allah will destroy you Israel".

Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said he would announce "serious measures" at an evening rally in Beirut.

Israel has warned it will stop the blockade-busting bid by Rachel Corrie - a 1,200-tonne cargo ship named after a US activist killed in 2003 as she tried to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from razing a Palestinian home.

Yesterday, it reiterated its offer, already rejected by the organisers, to deliver the goods to Gaza overland if the ship unloads in the Israeli port of Ashdod.

"We are well warned from every source that the Israelis intend to stop us and to intercept us," former UN assistant secretary general Denis Halliday told RTE radio from the ship.