AN ISRAELI NAVY GENERAL has said his country fired 308 live bullets at Turkish activists abroad one of the ships aboard the Gaza aid flotilla on May 31st, in an attack that killed nine aid workers – but said the act was ‘proportionate’ as it was attacked by lethal weapons including an Uzi machine gun.

Lieutenant-General Abi Ashkenazi, the country’s military chief of staff, made the admission to an Israeli commission of inquiry investigating how the Israeli defence forces stormed the Mavi Marmara ship, which was leading the humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza.

Israel was denying the flotilla access to Gaza as part of an embargo it had placed on goods being brought into the Palestinian-controlled region, which has since been relaxed.

“We encountered a determined action against our soldiers,” Ashkenazi testified yesterday, according to Bloomberg. “The second soldier who descended to the boat was shot in the stomach by pistol fire.”

Israeli marine commandos were equipped with anti-riot gear, but quickly switched to live fire to confront the activists because “if they had not done this, there would have been more casualties,” Ashkenazi added.

Ashkenazi said 308 live rounds were fired by the troops, while a senior aide told Reuters that 70 of the 308 were aimed to cause injury, while the rest were fired as warning shots.

Press TV says that the activists on board the ship maintain the commandos’ use of deadly force was unprovoked, and insist that any weapons they were able to take from the troops were disposed of, rather than used.

A UN Human Rights Council report issued last month said that several of the nine people who died in the attack may have been executed, while one person died from a brain injury received when a “beanbag” attack – a heavy round fired at a person’s torso, meant to knock them down but not cause significant injury – caused a victim to hit their head.