The pictures, published yesterday in the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, appear to contradict claims from activists that they did not attack Israeli troops in the botched raid on May 31 which killed nine people.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev seized on the publication of the photos and claimed they showed ‘that our boarding party in fact did face deadly violence from the hardcore Islamist activists on the boat from the fundamentalists’…

But the PR battle over the attack took another twist yesterday as a member of the Turkish group IHH, which organised the flotilla, said the images showed activists ‘intervening’ or ‘tending’ to the injured soldiers.