Tel Aviv – Angry Turks mourned activists killed in Israel's seizure of a Gaza-bound aid ship, as Israel sought on Thursday to deflect UN demands for an international inquiry by offering its own probe with outside observers. In another sign Israel was seeking to address criticism, a source close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he was considering some form of international role in enforcing an arms embargo on Gaza while letting in civilian goods. Netanyahu planned to convene senior cabinet ministers later on Thursday to discuss the idea, the source said. Turkey continued to fume over the killing of nine of its nationals, one of whom also held US citizenship. Thousands thronged an Istanbul funeral for eight of the pro-Palestinian activists who died in Monday's naval commando raid. The coffins were draped in Turkish and Palestinian flags. "Turkey will never forget such an attack on its ships and its people in international waters. Turkey's ties with Israel will never be the same again," President Abdullah Gul said of once-close relations with a strategic ally. Pro-Palestinian activists from the ship, freed at last after days incommunicado in Israeli jail, gave their own accounts of the incident, describing a "bloodbath" with people shot before their eyes and desperate efforts to treat the wounded. Israel says its troops fired only in self defense after meeting fierce resistance aboard the cruise-liner Mavi Marmara, part of an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip. In one of the key differences in the accounts, Bulent Yildirim, the head of a Turkish charity that organized the flotilla, denied Israeli claims that the activists opened fire first, with guns they seized from the Israelis. He said activists had seized guns but threw them overboard. "We told our friends on board: 'We will die, become martyrs, but never let us be shown... as the ones who used guns'." Laura Stuart, a British housewife and first aider, described frantic attempts to treat the injured in a makeshift sick room, and failed attempts to resuscitate some of the dead. "People had been shot in the arms, legs, in the head -- everywhere. We had so many injured. It was a bloodbath." Israel says the four-year-old blockade is to prevent the Palestinian territory's Hamas Islamist rulers bringing in Iranian long-range rockets. The United Nations, the European Union and Arab states say it has caused a humanitarian disaster. Amid a global outcry which included Turkey recalling its ambassador from Tel Aviv, US Vice President Joe Biden suggested an Israeli probe with international involvement, a proposal embraced by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. "I am in favor of an investigation. We have enough high-level legal experts ... if they want to take on observers from the outside, they can invite observers," Lieberman said on Israel Radio.
