<![CDATA[ Barco com bandeira portuguesa da flotilha humanitária atingido com drone ]]>

The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) released a video today showing a drone attack on the activist organization's ship, which flies the Portuguese flag and carries members of its leadership traveling to Gaza.

The video, recorded at 00:29 today, shows the flame of a shot coming down from above and the image and sound of an impact on one of the activist organization's "main vessels", the 'Family Boat', which caught fire following the attack.

In a second video, taken from a different angle, it can be seen that the attack almost hit two activists who were heading towards the location of the targeted vessel, when it was moored on the shore in the port of Sidi Bou Said, in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia.

The Tunisian Coast Guard assured this morning in a statement that "there is no hostile act or external attack."

The cause of the fire, according to the preliminary investigation by Tunisian authorities, is that it "came from the ship's life jackets."

GSF activists accused Israel of carrying out the attack in several videos posted on social media.

"Who owns this drone? We are in Tunisian sovereign territory," said Brazilian Thiago Ávila, one of the members of the flotilla, in one of these videos. He was at the port of Sidi Bou Said, where the vessels that left Spain at the beginning of the month began docking on Sunday, awaiting others that will join there until the resumption of the journey to Gaza this Wednesday.

According to members of the activist organization who were on board the damaged ship, the fire only caused "superficial" damage, as also shown in another video, and the 'Family Boat' will be part of the flotilla that will head to Gaza.

The GSF assured, in a statement sent to newsrooms, including Lusa, that all passengers and crew were safe, while denouncing the attack as an attempt to "intimidate and frustrate" the international civil initiative.

Wael Naouar, spokesman for the Maghreb fleet that joins the one that left Barcelona to continue the crossing scheduled for this Wednesday, asked Tunisians to go to the port to protect the ships there.

On Sunday, Portuguese activist Miguel Duarte, who is part of the humanitarian flotilla, had already lamented in statements to Lusa that the flotilla's ships were being flown over by drones, corroborating a complaint from the organization Global Movement to Gaza, which is part of the GSF.

In addition to this activist, the flotilla also includes the BE coordinator, Mariana Mortágua, and actress Sofia Aparício.

The Sumud Global Flotilla, which aims to be "the largest humanitarian mission in history" to the Palestinian territory of Gaza, initially departed from Barcelona on Sunday. "Sumud" is an Arabic word meaning resilience.

Israeli forces are currently waging an offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 64,600 people in the Hamas-ruled territory since 2007.

The offensive followed the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which left around 1,200 dead and 251 hostages.

Israel, which announced an operation to take Gaza City in the north of the enclave, has been accused of genocide and using starvation as a weapon of war, which it denies.

In August, the UN declared a famine in northern Gaza, a first in the Middle East.