"The new information about the manner and intensity of the killings undermines Israel's insistence that its soldiers opened fire only in self defence and in response to attacks by the activists."

Guardian article last Friday

"Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine, which carried out the autopsies for the Turkish ministry of justice today.

The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back.

Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, said Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the council of forensic medicine."

The Times pointed out that the first commandoes to land had indeed been disarmed by the passengers

"A wounded Turkish passenger, Muhyittin Yildirim, said: "Some Israeli soldiers were rendered ineffective.
Our friends got their weapons.
If they had a bad intention, they would have used the weapons against the soldiers but they threw them to the sea."

- In fact no Israel soldier had bullet wounds.

From CNN

"Five of the men died with bullet wounds to the head, said Dr. Haluk Ince, the director of Istanbul's Medical Examination Institute, said Friday
In one case, Ince said, a gunshot victim had been shot at at extremely close range.
"From the analysis of the bullet distance on one of the bodies," Dr. Ince said, "the gun was fired between 2 and 14 centimeters' distance from the victim's head."


The United States-based progressive/liberal news site OpEdNews comments that CNN nevertheless omitted "the all-important fact that most of the victims were shot from behind was left out.
ABC had the same information on Thursday, again without mentioning the shots from behind.
In its article on Friday, the NY Times had yet to even name Dogan, the American victim, much less mention the bullets that hit him or how he was shot.
As of Sunday, the Times had still not reported the nature of the deadly shots fired."