Contact to the 'Kårstein' which tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza broke off in the morning of July 29, 2018
Contact to the 'Kårstein' which tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza broke off in the morning of July 29, 2018. The ships on its way with medical equipment to the hospitals in Gaza, which have an acute shortage of vital medical equipment. Thousands of people in Gaza have been seriously injured in recent protests at the border with Israel. The 'Kårstein' had sailed with two smaller Swedish sailboats from Sicily. Together they were called 'Al Awda' (The Return) to mark the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in connection with the Israeli occupation in 1948. The sailboats lost contact with 'MS Kårstein' around 12:30 a.m. They suspected that the Israelis have boarded the fishing boat. The last thing they heardwas that they saw four warships on the horizon after previously having been warned by Israeli navy which asked them to turn around 49 nautical miles from Gaza's coast. In the afternoon, the Israeli navy confirmed that they had stopped the Norwegian ship. It was taken to the port of Ashdod in the south of Israel, near Gaza
