ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The Israeli foreign ministry announced Saturday that Tel Aviv deported 137 members of the Global Sumud Flotilla to Turkey, coming after Israeli forces seized the maritime aid convoy's vessels and arrested their crew en route to the Gaza Strip.

The individuals, described by the Israeli foreign ministry as “provocateurs of the Hamas–Sumud flotilla,” were citizens of “the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Algeria, Mauritania, Malaysia, Bahrain, Morocco, Switzerland, Tunisia, and Turkey,” wrote the ministry in a statement posted to X.

Israeli naval forces intercepted several vessels from the Flotilla late Wednesday, assuming control of the ships and detaining the activists onboard. The fleet started with 44 vessels, carrying activists aiming to deliver aid to Gaza.

The interception attracted condemnation from regional actors, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as the Iranian and Qatari foreign ministries.

The seizure of the Global Sumud Flotilla follows mere months after Israel intercepted a similar mission in June in the Madleen flotilla, also aiming to carry much-needed humanitarian aid to the war-ravaged Strip.

The Israeli foreign ministry said that the vessel arrived “under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid,’” arguing that “their true goal was provocation in the service of Hamas, not humanitarian assistance.”

In a statement shortly after the Israeli announcement, Turkey’s foreign ministry said in an X post that “We have safely brought our citizens and activists from some countries, who were part of the Global Sumud Flotilla, back to our country with a plane we allocated.”

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan welcomed the activists in a separate publication posted on his X account, describing the passengers on board the flotilla as “courageous individuals who appealed to the conscience of humanity [and] demonstrated an honorable stance against oppression with their courage and determination; through their struggle for justice and human values, they became the voice of the oppressed.”

The Israeli interception comes at a time of worsening humanitarian conditions and warnings of severe famine in the Gaza Strip amid a nearly three-year-old campaign by the Israeli army on the Strip that has reduced the city to rubble.

Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed over 66,000 people, most of whom are civilians, according to Gaza's health ministry. The bloodshed has drawn growing international backlash, most recently seen in a torrent of recognition of Palestinian statehood by Western countries, placing pressure on Israel and its allies to halt the conflict, as well as a push by US President Donald Trump to bring an end to the conflict.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’s (IPC) in August declared that there was a state of famine in the Strip, predicteding that over half a million people were facing Phase 5 catastrophic conditions. The UN-backed global initiative classifies the severity of food insecurity into five different categories, with Phase 5 Catastrophe/Famine being the most severe.

According to a Gaza healthy ministry statement on Saturday, 459 people have died of malnutrition in the Strip, including 154 children, noting that since the IPC famine declaration “181 deaths have been recorded, including 39 children.”