Israeli army chief backs use of live fire on Gaza flotilla

“Today it is clear to us that as soon as the first soldier had descended to the ship,a second soldier was shot,” he told the panel in a public session of the hearing. “The soldiers opened fire only where necessary.” He said that the wounded man returned fire at his attacker,despite having been hit in the stomach.

“He simply pulled out his gun and shot the shooter,” Ashkenazi said.

He rejected Turkish charges that some of the dead had been shot “execution-style” at point-blank range,saying that shots had been fired at close range as part of a life or death struggle.

“There was an instance when a soldier was being attacked with an axe,” he said. “Somebody with an axe…that is life-threatening.” No guns were found aboard the ship but the military has previously said that activists seized at least one firearm from the soldiers during the clashes.

Ashkenazi said that ballistics tests carried out on spent ammunition retrieved from the scene indicated that the activists had at least one firearm of their own but had likely thrown it overboard.

The general’s testimony on the May 31 operation,in which eight Turkish and one US-Turkish activist were killed,follows that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday and Defence Minister Ehud Barak yesterday.