JERUSALEM – Israel’s military said it will have its own experts examine what caused a naval raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla to turn deadly, while nations led by Turkey condemned the operation and intensified demands for an international investigation.

Turkey’s president released a statement Tuesday from 21 Asian countries meeting at a security summit that said “all member states, except one, expressed their grave concern and condemnation for the actions undertaken by the Israeli Defense Forces.”

President Abdullah Gul said 21 of the 22 nations in the grouping, which includes Israel, also called on the Jewish state to end its blockade of Gaza and to agree to an international investigation of the incident.

An overwhelming majority of the countries also called for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East and for Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and place all of its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Gul said.

Israel managed to block a joint declaration by the group, whose decisions require consensus, that would have condemned the raid, forcing Turkey to issue a separate statement attached to the declaration.

Israel is widely believed to have a sizable nuclear arsenal. Israel refuses to confirm or deny the suspicions.

Israel’s so-called policy of nuclear ambiguity is a cornerstone of its military deterrence. It has long said that a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace must precede such weapons bans.

Israel has not signed the nonproliferation treaty, which requires members to open nuclear facilities to inspection and to disarm.

In the May 31 raid, Israeli commandos rappelled onto the deck of one of the ships trying to break Israel’s three-year-old blockade of Gaza. The soldiers were intercepted by a crowd of activists, setting off a clash that killed nine men — eight Turks and a Turkish American.

Israel says its soldiers began shooting only after a mob of pro-Palestinian activists attacked them — a version backed up by video footage released by the army. But the activists and their supporters say Israeli commandos needlessly opened fire.

The incident triggered a storm of criticism of Israel. Russia’s powerful prime minister, Vladimir Putin, added Moscow’s weight to the calls for an international probe.

“It has to be investigated specially,” Putin said at a news conference in Istanbul with Turkey’s prime minister, a fierce critic of Israel since its war in Gaza 18 months ago.

The Israeli experts will review several internal military investigations already under way. The military said it expects findings by July 4 into what went wrong with the naval operation.

Israel has so far failed to defuse the calls for an international investigation or reduce pressure to end the blockade. Israel says the blockade is needed to prevent Gaza’s Hamas rulers from importing weapons.

Turkey unofficially sponsored the flotilla’s lead ship, where the violence occurred, and the two countries’ relations have suffered further strain since the raid.

In addition to the military inquiry, Israel’s government is seeking a formula for a broader probe that would defuse calls for an impartial investigation.

Senior Israeli Cabinet ministers on Monday proposed establishing a commission of Israeli jurists, joined by foreign observers, whose mandate would be to examine the legality of the Gaza blockade and the commandos’ conduct.

The proposal has been shown to U.S. and international officials to see if it meets their criteria for an impartial probe, government officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been officially announced.

The U.S. Embassy had no comment on the details of the proposal.

International mediator Tony Blair appeared to back the Israeli outline in an interview on Israel’s Channel 10 TV. “Any investigation has to be full and impartial, and there may be some international element that can be part of it,” he said.

At the U.N., where the Security Council called for an investigation, spokesman Faran Haq said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “understands that Israel is still considering how and if to bring an international element into the investigative process.”

Past experience has made Israel wary of letting outside powers lead an investigation.

A U.N.-appointed panel headed by veteran war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone accused Israel of war crimes in the Gaza offensive in the winter of 2008-2009. Israel rejected the accusations.

In Gaza Tuesday, Palestinians said they retrieved the body of two more militant divers killed in a clash with Israeli sailors off the coast a day earlier. Israel’s navy said Monday that it had opened fire on Palestinians in diving suits whom it spotted in the waters off Gaza. The military claimed, without providing details, that its forces prevented an attack on Israel.

Four bodies were retrieved on Monday and Gaza health official Dr. Moiaya Hassanain said two more bodies had been found Tuesday.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades said Monday that members of its marine unit were training in Gaza’s waters.

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Hacaoglu reported from Istanbul, Turkey. Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Edith M. Lederer at the U.N. contributed to this report.

LIMA, Peru – Dutchman Joran van der Sloot, long the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of a U.S. teen in Aruba, has confessed to killing a young Peruvian woman in his Lima hotel room, a police spokesman said.

Peru’s chief police spokesman, Col. Abel Gamarra, told The Associated Press that Van der Sloot admitted under questioning Monday that he killed 21-year-old Stephany Flores on May 30.

Several Peruvian media reported that Van der Sloot killed Flores in a rage after learning she had looked up information about his past on his laptop without his permission. They did not name their sources for the information.

The newspaper La Republica said that he tearfully confessed, in the presence of a prosecutor and a state-appointed attorney, to grabbing Flores by the neck and hitting her because she had viewed photos and videos about the Aruba case on his computer while he was out buying coffee.

Gamarra would not provide details of the confession. Nor would the chief of Peru’s criminal police, Gen. Cesar Guardia, when the AP reached him by telephone. Guardia said only police director Gen. Miguel Hidalgo could authorize the information to be divulged. Hidalgo’s cell phone rang unanswered.

Asked about the Van der Sloot confession, a brother of the victim, Enrique Flores, told the AP “we are not going to make any comment. This is in the hands of the police, of the justice system.”

Van der Sloot’s confession came on his third full day in Peruvian police custody, on the eve of a planned trip to the hotel in which he was to participate in a reconstruction of the events leading to Flores’ slaying, Gamarra said.

Flores, a business student, was found beaten to death, her neck broken, in the 22-year-old Dutchman’s hotel room. Police said the two met playing poker at a casino.

Video from hotel security cameras shows the two entering Van der Sloot’s hotel room together at 5 a.m. Saturday and Van der Sloot leaving alone four hours later with his bags. Police say Van der Sloot also left the hotel briefly at 8:10 a.m. and returned with two cups of coffee and bread purchased across the street at a supermarket.

Gamarra said the case would now be turned over to prosecutors to present formal charges and Van der Sloot will be assigned to a prison while he awaits trial. Murder convictions carry a maximum of 35 years in prison in Peru and it was not immediately clear if a confession could lead to a reduced sentence.

Van der Sloot remains the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teen Natalee Holloway, then 18, on the Caribbean resort island of Aruba while she was celebrating her high school graduation.

He was arrested twice in the case — and gave a number of conflicting confessions, some in TV interviews — but was freed for lack of evidence.

Holloway’s father told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday that Van der Sloot should tell all he knows about the disappearance of his daughter.

“He confessed to this one … I would like for him to tell everyone what happened” in the earlier case, Dave Holloway said. “Hopefully this is his last victim.”

A fixture on true crime shows and in tabloids after Holloway’s disappearance, he gained a reputation for lying — even admitting a penchant for it — and also exhibited a volatile temper. In one Dutch television interview he threw a glass of wine in a reporter’s eyes. In another, he smashed a glass of water against a wall in a fury.

The 6-foot-3 (191-centimeter) -tall Van der Sloot had been held at Peruvian criminal police headquarters since arriving Saturday in a police convoy from Chile, where he was captured on Thursday.

He had crossed into Chile on Monday, nearly a day after leaving the Lima hotel — five years to the day after Holloway’s disappearance.

Lima’s deputy medical investigator, Victor Tejada, told the AP that Flores was killed by blows with a blunt object, probably the tennis racket found in the hotel room.

Guardia told the AP her body was found face down and clothed with no indication of sexual assault.

In video taken of the Dutchman that was broadcast by a TV channel, Peruvian police were seen searching Van der Sloot’s belongings in his presence, pulling a laptop, a business-card holder and 15 bills in foreign currency from his backpack.

Chilean police who questioned Van der Sloot earlier said he declared himself innocent of the Lima slaying but acknowledged knowing Flores.

Van der Sloot was represented by a state-appointed lawyer during Saturday’s questioning and both a Dutch Embassy official and his U.S.-based attorney told the AP on Sunday that he was seeking to hire his own counsel.

The suspect’s father, a former judge and attorney on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, died in February. Van der Sloot has two brothers.

There were indications Van der Sloot may have been traveling on money gained through extortion.

The day of his arrest in Chile, Van der Sloot was charged in the United States with trying to extort $250,000 from Holloway’s family in exchange for disclosing the location of her body and describing how she died.

U.S. prosecutors say $15,000 was transferred to a Dutch bank account in his name on May 10. He arrived in Peru four days later, his visit coinciding with the runup to a June 2-5 Latin America Poker Tour tournament with a $930,000 prize pool.

Tournament organizers said Van der Sloot did not sign up to participate in the event.

Van der Sloot is an avid gambler and was known to frequent Aruba’s casino hotels, one of which was lodging Natalee Holloway.

In a lengthy 2006 interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, Van der Sloot described drinking shots of rum with Holloway, whom he said he met while playing poker at an Aruba casino, then taking her to a beach and leaving her there around 3:30 a.m.

Two years later, a Dutch television crime reporter captured hidden-camera footage of Van der Sloot saying that after Holloway, drunk, collapsed on the beach while the two were kissing he asked a friend to dump her body in the sea.

“I would never murder a girl,” he said.

That interview prompted authorities in Aruba to reopen the case, but Van der Sloot later said he made up the whole story and he was not charged.

The crime reporter, Peter de Vries — the victim of the wine-throwing incident — reported later in 2008 that Van der Sloot was recruiting Thai women in Bangkok for sex work in the Netherlands.

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Associated Press Writers Carla Salazar in Lima, Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, and Arthur Max in Amsterdam contributed to this report.

ROME – The clerical sex abuse crisis is energizing Roman Catholic dissidents who want to open up the priesthood to women and ditch celibacy requirements.

They marched on Rome Tuesday even as Pope Benedict XVI called on priests to converge on the Vatican to cap a yearlong celebration of the priesthood. And in a sign of the deepening crisis, the faithful in traditionally Catholic Austria are at the forefront of demands for change.

In Rome, church reformers demanded changes in the male-dominated church structure they say is responsible for covering up priestly sex abuse for decades, pressing their case on the eve of a three-day rally of the world’s priests summoned by Benedict.

What was meant to be a year of celebration has turned into one marred by revelations of hundreds of new cases of clerical abuse and Vatican inaction to root out pedophile priests.

Representatives from a half-dozen pro-women’s ordination groups denounced Benedict’s rally, saying the Vatican shouldn’t be honoring priests amid a clerical sex abuse scandal.

“The worldwide shocking disclosures of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church and its concealment for decades clearly shows the scandalous aberration that can be caused by a supervalued male priesthood with forced celibacy,” said Angelica Fromm, a representative of We are Church, a reform group born after an infamous clerical abuse scandal in Austria.

We are Church is one of many reform groups calling for women’s ordination and a relaxation of the church’s celibacy requirement for priests.

While progress in the women’s ordination campaign seems far away since church doctrine holds that only men can be priests, there are indications that the tradition of a celibate priesthood may see some change — albeit not under Benedict.

A grassroots movement in Austria has a powerful champion in Vienna’s archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn — a papal confidant who has openly called for an honest examination of issues like celibacy.

Another Austrian bishop, Eisenstadt Bishop Paul Iby has also said it should be up to priests to decide whether they want to live a celibate life and that he would welcome it if married men could be ordained. Iby has also said that eventually the ordination of women should be considered.

Pro-women’s ordination groups staged a brief, peaceful protest in St. Peter’s Square on Tuesday. The dozen or so protesters were stopped by police and told to leave.

“The Vatican is all too happy to turn a blind eye when men in its ranks destroy the lives of children and families, but jumps at the chance to excommunicate women who are doing works and responding to injustice and the needs of their communities,” said Erin Saiz Hanna, executive director of the U.S.-based Women’s Ordination Conference.

An estimated 9,000 priests from around the world are expected to attend Benedict’s rally, which amid the scandal morphed into a show of support for the pontiff under fire for the Vatican’s handling of abuse cases.

It’s not clear whether Benedict will address the abuse scandal during his two public events Thursday and Friday, but news reports and a high-ranking Vatican official have said he may.

Also converging on Rome Tuesday ahead of the priest rally were representatives of the main U.S. clerical abuse victims group, Survivors Network for Those Abused By Priests. They demanded Pope Benedict XVI use the occasion to issue an apology and a zero-tolerance policy to keep abusive priests away from children.

They also demanded the immediate halt to the beatification process of Pope John Paul II pending an investigation into his knowledge of cover-ups of clerical abuse. Among the most egregious cases of alleged Vatican inaction in abuse involves the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, who was held in great esteem by John Paul for his ability to attract vocations.

Recent news reports in the National Catholic Reporter have said Vatican officials received payoffs from Maciel and otherwise turned a blind eye to allegations of Maciel’s misdeeds for decades.

Last month, after conducting an investigation, the Vatican said it was taking over the conservative order after determining that Maciel had led a double life “devoid of any scruples and authentic sense of religion” that allowed him to abuse young boys unchecked.

The Vatican admitted no wrongdoing, however.

ISTANBUL – Mourners hoisted coffins over their heads Thursday to cheers of “God is great!” as they honored activists slain during an Israeli commando raid, and the father of the lone American killed praised his teenage son as being a martyr for a just cause.

The joint funeral in Istanbul came as Israel rejected demands for an international panel to investigate its deadly takeover Monday of six aid ships trying to break Israel’s three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hotly rejected calls to lift the blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, insisting the ban prevents missile attacks on Israel.

Some 10,000 people prayed Thursday outside Istanbul’s Fatih mosque before eight Turkish and Palestinian flag-draped coffins lined up in a row. Eight Turks and American-Turkish dual citizen were honored, ranging in age from 19 to over 60. A ninth victim, a Turkish man, was having a separate service on Friday.

“Our friends have been massacred,” said Bulent Yildirim, the head of the Islamic charity group IHH that organized the Gaza flotilla, before mourners carried the coffins through the crowd to cars for the burial.

The body of Furkan Dogan, a 19-year-old with dual U.S.-Turkish citizenship, was to be flown to his family’s hometown of Kayseri for burial Friday, the state-run Anatolia News Agency reported.

His father Ahmet told Anatolia he identified his son at the morgue and he had been shot in the forehead. Still, he said, the family was not sad because they believed Furkan had died with honor.

“I feel my son has been blessed with heaven,” he said. “I am hoping to be a father worthy of my son.”

Before dawn, thousands had flooded Istanbul’s main Taksim Square to welcome home hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists from the aid boats who had expelled. Israel, which has faced strong international criticism for the botched military operation, decided not to prosecute the activists in an effort to limit diplomatic outrage.

One large banner read “Murderous Israelis: Take your hands off our ships” while others in the crowd held signs reading “From now on, nothing will be the same” and “Intifada is everywhere — at land and at sea” — in reference to the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

In all, 466 activists, including more than 50 foreigners, arrived in Istanbul early Thursday, along with Turkey’s ambassador to Israel, Oguz Celikkol.

All of the nine slain activists died from gunshot wounds — some from close range — according to initial forensic examinations done in Turkey after the bodies were returned, NTV television reported, citing unidentified medical sources.

Israel maintains that the commandos only used their pistols as a last resort after they were attacked, and released a video showing soldiers in riot gear descending from a helicopter into a crowd of men with clubs. Three or four activists overpowered each soldier as he landed.

Israeli officials have insisted that their military already is investigating the raid and the country is capable of conducting a credible review.

“It is our standard practice after military operations, especially operations in which there have been fatalities, to conduct a prompt, professional, transparent and objective investigation in accordance with the highest international standards,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, however, suggested that international observers could possibly be attached to an internal Israeli probe.

Returning activists admitted fighting with the Israelis but insisted their actions were in self defense because the ships were being boarded in international waters by a military force.

“We first thought they were trying to scare us,” Yildirim said, following his deportation from Israel. “When we started morning prayers, they began attacking from everywhere, from the boats, from the helicopters. Our friends only performed civil resistance.”

Yildirim said the activists fought the Israeli commandos with chairs and sticks and that they seized weapons from some Israeli soldiers, but threw them into the sea.

Israel says two of the seven soldiers wounded were shot with guns that were wrested from them, while a third was stabbed.

The incident has increased tensions in the Mideast, especially with Turkey, Israel’s closest ally in the Muslim world. On Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel’s actions “a historic mistake.”

“Israel risks losing its most important friend in the region if it doesn’t change its mentality,” he said, adding later “from now on we will not bow to this bullying.”

Activists from the flotilla insisted their purpose was peaceful.

“However much the Israelis are screaming that they have found weapons, it is just nonsense,” said best-selling Swedish crime novelist Henning Mankell, who on the Swedish-Greek ship Sofia in the Gaza convoy. “On the ship where I was, they found one weapon and that was my safety razor.”

Sarah Colborne of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign called the Israeli boarding an act of piracy and dismissed claims of weapons.

“Yes, we had kitchen knives, because we were on (the boat) for some days. We needed kitchen knives to eat. Those are not weapons,” she told reporters in London. “I did not see any kitchen knives used at all while … this was all taken place.”

At U.N. headquarters on Thursday, Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee told ambassadors from Islamic states that the Israeli raid was “a well orchestrated terrorist act” and “another manifestation of the inhuman and barbaric nature of the Zionist regime.”

He urged strong sanctions against Israel, demanded it pay compensation for the deaths and injuries, and urged other nations to cut diplomatic relations with Israel.

The Foreign Press Association criticized the Israeli army for what it called a selective use of videos confiscated from journalists on the ships to justify its deadly raid at sea.

The organization, which represents hundreds of journalists in Israel and the Palestinian territories, says the military seized video and equipment from dozens of reporters on the main aid ship Marmara.

It demanded the military stop using the captured material without permission and identify the source of the video already released.

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Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Albert Aji in Damascus, Malin Rising in Stockholm, Eddie Lederer at the United Nations and Andrew Khouri in London contributed to this report.

KABUL, Afghanistan – A clash between Afghan forces and Taliban militants left four civilians dead in a southern district where a major NATO operation early this year was meant to reassert government control, a provincial official said Thursday.

Also, a roadside bombing in the same province killed four other civilians.

The clash happened early Wednesday after militants fired on an Afghan forces patrol in Marjah district, sparking a gunbattle, Helmand provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said. The civilians — three men and one woman — were killed when a rocket hit a house, he said.

No security forces were hurt, Ahmadi added. It was not clear if there were any militant casualties.

Four other civilians — two men and two young boys — were killed when their motorbike hit a roadside bomb in Helmand’s Nawzad district on Wednesday afternoon, he said.

Civilian casualties are a hot-button issue in Afghanistan. Although most are caused by militant action, those caused by Afghan and international security forces are believed to undercut support for the weak Afghan government and boost support for the insurgents.

A major operation launched in February by NATO forces was intended to wrest Marjah, a Taliban stronghold and a center of the lucrative opium trade, from insurgents. Despite subsequent efforts to win the support of residents with development projects and improved security, militants are believed to have melted back into the community where they still wield influence.

The U.S. Defense Department, meanwhile, confirmed the death of a U.S. soldier from militant gunfire in neighboring Kandahar province on Tuesday.

NATO is readying its next major operation in that province, the Taliban movement’s birthplace — key to the Obama administration’s strategy of turning around the nearly nine-year war.

NATO reported that Afghan and NATO forces killed several suspected insurgents and detained others for questioning in a two-day clearing operation of a Taliban hide-out in the province’s Zhari district that ended Thursday morning.

In other violence, a roadside bombing hit an Afghan army truck in eastern Nangahar province on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding two, said Ghafoor Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

In Wardak province, which is adjacent to the capital Kabul, a joint operation of Afghan and international forces captured a district-level Taliban commander, Mullah Habibullah, said Shahidullah Shahid, spokesman for the provincial governor.

NATO described him as a Taliban facilitator who bought and distributed rockets, ammunition and bomb materials to insurgent networks.

Five militants were killed and eight others in addition to Habibullah were arrested in the operation in Sayed Abad district, Shahid said.

In southern Zabul province, NATO and Afghan forces killed five Taliban insurgents in an operation Wednesday, said Mohammad Jan Rasoolyar, a spokesman for the provincial government.

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Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

WHITEHAVEN, England – British detectives investigated Thursday whether financial troubles or a family feud triggered a taxi driver’s murderous rampage across a tranquil part of rural England, which left 12 people dead and 11 wounded.

More than 100 detectives were scrutinizing why Derrick Bird, 52, went on a three-hour shooting spree in the northwestern county of Cumbria, blasting many of his victims in the face before committing suicide in isolated woodland. It was the country’s worst mass killing in 14 years.

Police said the victims included Bird’s twin brother, David, and the family lawyer, Kevin Commons.

Police urged people to be patient while they worked to uncover a motive for the killings, which shook a country where handguns are banned and multiple shootings rare.

There were rumors Bird had financial problems or domestic troubles, Cumbria police Det. Chief Superintendent Iain Goulding said.

“They are all proper lines of investigation for us,” Goulding said, adding police had found no record of any mental health problems or medication taken by Bird.

“My officers and I are absolutely determined to get to the bottom of why this happened,” he said. “However, it may not be possible to establish all the answers, because we cannot speak to Derrick Bird.”

Goulding said some of the victims appeared to have been targeted and others selected at random.

Eight of the wounded remained hospitalized Thursday, with four listed in stable condition and the other four in good condition. Five of the wounded treated at West Cumberland Hospital had been shot in the face, said Charles Brett, the hospital’s clinical director of emergency care.

“There’s a predominance of facial injuries in what we’ve seen,” he said. “More than 50 percent of those who survived had some form of facial injury.”

The first shootings were reported Wednesday morning in the coastal town of Whitehaven, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London. Police warned residents to stay indoors as they tracked the gunman’s progress across the county.

Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting from his car window. Police said there were 30 separate crime scenes.

Bird’s body was found in woods near Boot, a hamlet popular with hikers and vacationers in England’s hilly, scenic Lake District. Police said a shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle fitted with a telescopic sight were recovered from the scene. Officials confirmed Bird held licenses for both weapons.

In Whitehaven, groups of residents gathered at the local market to remember those who died — and recount tales of near-misses.

Michael Murray, who is also a taxi driver, was standing near the front of cab stand when Bird, known affectionately as “Birdie,” first approached.

“I saw Birdie pull up beside me and he was waving a shotgun out of the window,” Murray said. “I ducked to the floor before I could see if he was pointing at me.

“I always got on with Birdie, he had no grudges against me, I suppose that’s what saved me. He was a sound guy and a private guy.”

June Lamb, a housewife, said she knew Bird “very well.”

“Derrick didn’t mix with people very much,” she said. “He was very quiet, but not a loner as such.”

Prime Minister David Cameron, who plans to visit the area Friday, ruled out any quick review of Britain’s stringent gun laws as a result of the killings. Ownership of rifles and shotguns is tightly regulated, and license holders undergo police and medical record checks, Cameron said.

Police said Bird had convictions for theft dating back to 1990, although he had never been to jail, but that didn’t prevent him from obtaining a gun license.

Rules on gun ownership were tightened after two massacres. In 1987, gun enthusiast Michael Ryan killed 16 people in the English town of Hungerford. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland.

In recent years, there have been fewer than 100 gun murders annually across Britain; in 2008-2009 there were 39.

J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego, said most mass killers have spent considerable time formulating their plan.

“There’s likely to be leakage, some communication to a third party about an intent to do this kind of killing,” Meloy said. “But people who have access to the leakage tend to minimize it or deny it. It is such an unusual or abhorrent event, they don’t believe the person is going to do it.”

Peter Leder, a taxi driver who knew Bird, said he had seen the gunman Tuesday and didn’t notice anything that was obviously amiss. But he was struck by Bird’s departing words.

“When he left he said, ‘See you Peter, but I won’t see you again,’” Leder told Channel 4 News.

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Jill Lawless reported from London. Associated Press Writers Jennifer Quinn, David Stringer and Danica Kirka in London and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

JERUSALEM – Pro-Palestinian activists sent another boat to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and Egypt declared it was temporarily opening a crossing into the Palestinian territory after a raid on an aid flotilla that ended with Israeli soldiers killing nine activists.

The raid provoked ferocious international condemnation of Israel, raised questions at home, and appeared likely to increase pressure to end its blockade that seeks to keep Iranian-backed Hamas from building its arsenal of weapons but has also deepened the poverty of the 1.5 million Palestinians in the strip.

Turkey, which unofficially supported the flotilla, has led the criticism, calling the Israeli raid a “bloody massacre” and demanding that Washington condemn the raid. The White House has reacted cautiously, calling for disclosure of all the facts.

There were signs, however, that the long-term strategic partnership between Israel and its most important Muslim ally would endure: Turkey canceled three joint land and sea exercises, but appeared to be otherwise maintaining deep military ties that include the planned delivery of $183 million in Israeli drones this summer.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke to his Turkish counterpart as well as their chief of staff Monday, and they agreed that the raid wouldn’t affect weapons deals, defense officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing sensitive military ties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, indicated Israel would consider ways to ease the blockade to allow more goods into Gaza — a policy that has been quietly under way in recent months.

“We have been expanding the assistance that has been going into the Gaza Strip — both the volume and the variety of goods — and we have ongoing dialogue with the international community.

But he stressed that Israel could not end the blockade, fearing that Hamas would ship rockets and other weapons into the area. “We cannot have unfettered naval cargo going into the Gaza Strip,” he said.

Amid the tensions, the Israeli military said it carried out an airstrike in Gaza on Tuesday, and an Islamic militant group said three of its members were killed after firing rockets into southern Israel. Israeli authorities say the rockets landed in open areas and caused no injuries.

Two militants infiltrating into Israel from Gaza were killed in a separate incident Tuesday, the military said.

In other violence, Israeli hospital officials said an American woman lost her eye during a demonstration Monday in Jerusalem against the naval raid. Emily Henochowicz of Maryland was in intensive care after undergoing surgery, said hospital spokeswoman Yael Bossem-Levy. Witnesses said Henochowicz, 21, was hit by a tear gas canister in the face while Palestinian youths were throwing rocks, although she was standing at a distance.

The pro-Palestinian flotilla had been headed to Gaza with tens of thousands of tons of aid that Israel bans from Gaza. After days of warnings, Israel intercepted the flotilla under the cover of darkness early Monday, setting off a violent melee that left nine activists dead and dozens of people, including seven soldiers, wounded. Most of the dead were believed to be Turks.

Israel said 679 people were arrested, and about 50 of those had left the country voluntarily. Hundreds who refused to cooperate remained jailed and subject to deportation.

Israel says the Gaza blockade is needed to prevent Hamas, which has fired thousands of rockets into the Jewish state, from building up its arsenal. It also wants to pressure Hamas to free an Israeli soldier it has held for four years.

Critics say the blockade has failed to weaken Hamas but further strapped an already impoverished economy. It also has prevented Gaza from rebuilding after a devastating Israeli military offensive early last year.

Egypt, which has enforced the blockade with Israel since Hamas militants seized control of Gaza in 2007, said it was opening the border for several days to allow aid into the area as a humanitarian gesture. It was unclear, however, when Hamas guards at the frontier would let people out.

Several thousand Gazans — some in cars with suitcases piled on their roofs, others on foot — rushed to the Egyptian border, hoping to take advantage of a rare chance to escape the blockaded territory.

The Hamas Interior Ministry said authorities were not prepared to open the crossing and noted that government employees were on strike to mourn those killed in Monday’s raid. Large crowds of people milled about the crossing, occasionally shouting at border guards, but there was no unrest.

Dozens of Hamas police with automatic weapons patrolled the area to maintain order.

“We are working to help residents take advantage of this opportunity,” said Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Ihab Ghussein. “We hope it will be open all the time, not just as a response to yesterday’s events.”

Greta Berlin said the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla, would not be deterred and that another cargo boat was off the coast of Italy en route to Gaza. A second boat carrying about three dozen passengers is expected to join it, Berlin said. She said the two boats would arrive in the region late this week or early next week.

“This initiative is not going to stop,” she said from the group’s base in Cyprus. “We think eventually Israel will get some kind of common sense. They’re going to have to stop the blockade of Gaza, and one of the ways to do this is for us to continue to send the boats.”

The Israeli military refused to say how it would respond to the arrival of new Gaza-bound ships. But Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said, “there is no change in policy” and urged activists to send the aid into Gaza through current, authorized means.

“We have no intention to use violence and there is no need for this to end violently,” Palmor said. “If they want the aid to get to Gaza, they can send through the regular peaceful channels. I think they understand that seeking confrontation will not do them any good.”

Protests erupted in a number of Muslim countries, including Turkey, which unofficially supported the flotilla, Indonesia and Malaysia, where a Palestinian man slashed himself outside the U.S. Embassy.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an outspoken critic of Israel, told lawmakers the Israeli raid was an attack “on international law, the conscience of humanity and world peace.”

“This bloody massacre by Israel on ships that were taking humanitarian aid to Gaza deserves every kind of curse,” he said, demanding that Israel immediately halt its “inhumane” blockade of Gaza.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said four Turkish citizens were confirmed slain by Israeli commandos and another five were also believed to be Turks. Israeli authorities were still trying to confirm their nationalities.

Thousands of pro-Islamic and nationalist Turks have poured into the streets in Istanbul and Ankara since the report of the Israeli raid. Protesters with Palestinian and Turkish flags shouted “Down with Israel!” outside Israeli diplomatic missions.

Within Israel, the raid sparked intense debate over why the military operation went awry.

Israel sent commandos onto the six ships carrying nearly 700 activists after mission organizers ignored the government’s call to bring the cargo to an Israeli port, where it would be inspected and transferred to Gaza. In most cases, the passengers quickly surrendered. But on the largest ship, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, the forces encountered resistance.

Israeli commandos rappelled on ropes from a helicopter and army videos showed them being attacked by angry activists with metal rods and one soldier being thrown off the ship. Others jumped overboard to escape the angry mob. Israeli authorities said they were attacked by knives, clubs and live fire from two pistols wrested from soldiers. The soldiers then opened fire, killing nine.

Israeli military analysts said it was a mistake to send commandos to board the Marmara and the military could have used non-lethal weapons such as tear gas. They also said the intelligence-gathering was faulty.

Retired Gen. Shlomo Brom asked why the ships’ engines weren’t sabotaged instead.

“There were certain objectives to this operation. One was not to let the vessels get to Gaza, but the other objective was to do it without any damage to Israel’s image,” Brom told The Associated Press. “Certainly it failed.”

The daily Maariv, in a front-page headline, called the raid a “debacle.”

Sabine Haddad, spokeswoman for the Israeli Interior Ministry, said 679 people were arrested and handed deportation orders. By midafternoon Tuesday, some 50 people had left the country voluntarily. But hundreds refused to cooperate and were jailed.

“The rest said they wanted to go to jail and are at Beersheba jail going through a process of deportation,” she said. She said judges were hearing the cases and that almost everyone would be expelled within the next few days.

She said more than half of those arrested were from Turkey, with others coming from more than 30 other countries, including Britain, Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Germany and the U.S. Israeli police said four Arab Israeli citizens would face criminal charges.

Israel did not allow access to the activists, but a handful who were deported arrived home Tuesday, including a Turkish woman and her 1-year-old son, six Greeks and three German lawmakers.

“There was a massacre on board,” said the woman, Nilufer Cetin, whose husband, Ekrem, is the Marmara’s engineer and was still in Israeli custody. “The ship turned into a lake of blood.”

Norman Paech, a former member of Germany’s Left Party who was aboard the Marmara, said he only saw three activists resisting.

“They had no knives, no axes, only sticks that they used to defend themselves,” Paech said at a news conference in Berlin after he and four other Germans returned from Tel Aviv. He added, however, that he could “not rule out” that others used weapons somewhere else on the boat.

Turkey said it was sending three ambulance planes to Israel to return 20 Turkish activists injured in the operation and had other aircraft ready to get other activists. About 400 Turks took part in the flotilla.

The flotilla was the ninth attempt by sea to breach the blockade Israel and Egypt imposed after Hamas violently seized the territory. Israel allowed five seaborne aid shipments through but snapped the blockade shut after its 2009 war in Gaza.

There was little call in Israel to end the blockade. Israelis have little sympathy for Gaza, which sent thousands of rockets and mortar rounds crashing into Israel for years before last year’s war.

The Israeli-Gaza border was tense following the naval raid.

The Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad said three of its fighters were killed Tuesday shortly after firing rockets into southern Israel. Israeli authorities say the rockets landed in open areas and caused no injuries.

The Israeli military confirmed its airstrike, and Gaza’s chief medical examiner also said there were three deaths.

On Tuesday morning, the Israeli military said Gaza militants infiltrated Israel and exchanged fire with troops. Israeli rescue services said two militants were killed, but the military would not immediately confirm that.

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Associated Press writers Karin Laub, Grant Slater and Matti Friedman in Jerusalem, Ashraf Sweilam in Sinai, Egypt, and Selcan Hacaoglu and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.

GUATEMALA CITY – Rural villagers used hoes and pick axes to hunt for victims of landslides that have killed at least 179 people in Central America while officials in Guatemala’s capital tried to cope with a vast sinkhole that swallowed a clothing factory.

Thousands remained homeless and dozens still missing following the season’s first tropical storm. Rescue crews struggled to reach isolated communities to distribute food and water.

“This is a total tragedy,” said Jose Vicente Samayoa, president of a neighborhood group in Amatitlan, a flooded town south of Guatemala’s capital.

Officials in Guatemala reported 152 dead but said 100 people were still missing. In the department of Chimaltenango — a province west of Guatemala City — landslides buried rural Indian communities and killed at least 60 people.

Curious onlookers also gathered at a massive sinkhole that swallowed an entire intersection in Guatemala City over the weekend, gulping down a clothing factory but causing no deaths or injuries.

Authorities estimate the hole is 65 feet (20 meters) deep and say it was caused by water from Tropical Storm Agatha.

Nearly 125,000 people were evacuated in Guatemala and thousands more fled their homes in neighboring Honduras, where the death toll rose to 17 after two youths disappeared while bathing in a turbulent river despite official warnings to stay away from swollen waterways.

Most schools also resumed classes on Tuesday in Honduras.

In El Salvador, 11,000 people were evacuated. The death toll rose to 10 and two others were missing, President Mauricio Funes said Monday night.

About 95 percent of the country’s roads were affected by landslides, but most remained open, Transportation Minister Gerson Martinez said. He said 179 bridges had been wrecked.

Agatha made landfall near the Guatemala-Mexico border on Saturday with tropical storm winds of up to 45 mph (75 kph). It dissipated the following day over the mountains of western Guatemala.

The rising death toll is reminding nervous residents of Hurricane Mitch, which hovered over Central America for days in 1998, causing flooding and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing and unaccounted for.

Rescue efforts in Guatemala have been complicated by a volcanic eruption Thursday near the capital that blanketed parts of the area with ash.

Commercial flights were expected to resume Tuesday at Guatemala’s international airport.

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Associated Press writers Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Diego Mendez in San Salvador, El Salvador, contributed to this report.

KABUL, Afghanistan – The Taliban on Tuesday dismissed this week’s national peace conference in Afghanistan even before it had begun, threatening death to the 1,600 delegates in cassette messages distributed by the insurgent leadership.

The three-day meeting, which begins Wednesday in a giant tent at Kabul Polytechnic University, will discuss how to reconcile with the fighters — even as the U.S. rushes in more troops to ramp up the nearly nine-year war. But the meeting could also open fissures in a society deeply divided after decades of conflict.

President Hamid Karzai will use the conference, known as a “peace jirga,” to seek endorsement of his plan to offer economic incentives to Taliban and other insurgent fighters willing to leave the battlefield.

On the eve of the conference, the Taliban said in a statement to news organizations that the jirga does not represent the Afghan people and was aimed at “securing the interest of foreigners.”

It said the participants “are on the payroll of the invaders and work for their interests.”

To reinforce the message, a cassette recording was circulated last week by courier within the Taliban’s underground government, in which the chairman of the Taliban council, Mullah Abdul Ghani, warned that “the punishment for participating in the jirga is death.”

Information about the cassette was provided to The Associated Press by a Taliban member whose information has proven reliable over many years.

Another major insurgent group, Hizb-i-Islami led by ex-Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, called the conference “a useless exercise” because “only hand-picked people” were invited.

One of the delegates told the AP that he took the Taliban threat seriously, though he still planned to attend. He refused to allow his name to be published, explaining that “if they know that I am attending there will be a suicide bomber outside my door.”

Nevertheless, Karzai is hoping the jirga will bolster him politically by supporting his strategy of offering incentives to individual Taliban fighters and reaching out to the insurgent leadership, despite skepticism in Washington that the time is right for an overture to militant leaders.

“This is a positive first step because everybody realizes war is not the solution. We have to have a political solution,” said Hamid Gailani, a prominent lawmaker from southern Afghanistan. “If there is no sound understanding and cooperation between the Afghan government and the coalition forces, then God save us all.”

Some members of Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities also fear Karzai may be too eager to sell out their interests in hopes of cutting a deal with the Taliban, who, like him, are Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group.

About 20 percent of the delegates will be women, a group that also suffered under Taliban rule.

Malalai Joya, who was expelled from parliament after a blistering verbal attack on warlords who dominate Afghanistan’s legislature, said she feared the jirga would lead to an eventual unity between warlords and Taliban.

“They insult us with this word ‘peace,’” she said. “They want only to make unity with these bloody criminal warlords and with the Taliban and the terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.”

Although active members of the Taliban will not attend, some delegates once played key roles in the Islamist movement and doubtless maintain contacts with the militants.

They include Naeem Kuchi, a former Taliban commander who spent more than two years in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay. Kuchi was among the Taliban commanders who led a massacre of ethnic Hazaras in Bamiyan province, site of the ancient statues of Buddha that were destroyed during Taliban rule.

Another prominent ex-Taliban delegate is Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, a former Taliban corps commander for eastern Afghanistan. He expressed disappointment that the insurgents would not attend.

“Our country is sick. This jirga is a kind of prescription but I fear this prescription can’t fix our country,” Rocketi said.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and ex-Guantanamo inmate, said he doubted any peace plan that calls for paying Taliban fighters to quit the war will succeed.

“Mostly they are fighting for their freedom,” said Zaeef, who is not a delegate. “The people who are fighting are fighting for ideological reasons. They want the foreigners to leave their country.”

He acknowledged the U.S. had the right to demand that Afghanistan not be used to launch terror attacks like the Sept. 11 strikes in the United States. Other issues should be left to Afghans, he said.

“If the issue with the United States is women’s rights, then why are they good with Saudi Arabia,” he said. “If the issue is with democracy, then why are they good with Saudi Arabia and with Qatar,” referring to U.S.-backed Arab kingdoms.

On the battlefield, a NATO service member was killed Monday by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said without identifying the nationality. U.S. helicopters flew about 200 Afghan troops into a remote northeastern district overrun by the Taliban and recaptured the main town Tuesday without firing a shot, military officials said.

The operation occurred in the Barg-e-Matal district of Nuristan province and was expected to last several days, U.S. officers familiar with the operation said.

SARDIHA, India – Suspected Maoist rebels derailed an overnight passenger train Friday in eastern India, triggering a crash with an oncoming cargo train that killed at least 71 people and injured about 200 more, officials said.

Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos after the derailment and said it took rescuers more than three hours to reach the scene. The blue passenger train and the red cargo train were knotted together in mangled metal along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Calcutta in West Bengal state.

Officials disagreed on the cause of the derailment, with some saying it was caused by an explosion but others blaming sabotaged rail lines. Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a statement that a section of the railway tracks had been cut, but “whether explosives were used is not yet clear.”

Bhupinder Singh, the top police official in West Bengal, said posters from the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, a group local officials believe is closely tied to the Maoists, had been found at the scene taking responsibility for the attack.

However, a spokesman for the group, Asit Mahato, denied any role, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

“We were in no way involved. This is not our act,” PTI quoted him as saying by phone.

“What can we do if somebody claims responsibility on our behalf?” he told PTI when asked about the posters found near the scene.

The area is an isolated, rural stronghold of India’s Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites, who have stepped up attacks in recent months and had called for a four-day general strike starting Friday. Earlier this month, the rebels ambushed a bus in central India, killing 31 police officers and civilians.

Nearly 10 hours after the blast, railway police and paramilitary soldiers were using blowtorches and cables to try to reach at least a dozen passengers still trapped in the wreckage, said A.P. Mishra, general manager of the railway system in that area.

Sher Ali, a 25-year-old Mumbai factory worker, was traveling with his wife, two children and his brother’s family when they were jerked awake by a loud thud. A moment later, their car was tossed from the track, he said.

“My sister-in-law was crushed when the coach overturned. We saw her dying, but we couldn’t do anything to help her,” said Ali, who had cuts on his head and arms. The rest of the family survived, though a 10-year-old nephew was badly injured and hospitalized.

Ali was unable to go to the hospital, though, because all his money was in his luggage inside the wreckage and he was afraid it would be stolen unless he kept watch.

The passenger train was traveling from Calcutta to the Mumbai suburb of Kurla when 13 cars derailed. A cargo train then slammed into three of the cars from the other direction, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said.

Mishra said the train had been derailed by a bomb and that the tracks had also been sabotaged. Banerjee said authorities suspected the bomb was planted by Maoist rebels.

Soumitra Majumdar, a railway spokesman said 71 people were confirmed dead and nearly 200 people were injured. He said it was likely the toll would rise as search and rescue operations continued.

Helicopters were eventually brought in to help evacuate the injured to local hospitals, officials said.

The rebels, who have tapped into the rural poor’s growing anger at being left out of the country’s economic gains, are now present in 20 of the country’s 28 states and have an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, according to the Home Ministry.

Banerjee said the Saridha area had been the scene of earlier Naxalite attacks, and that trains were under orders to travel slowly through the region — in part so the drivers can keep watch for sabotaged tracks or bombs, and in part so the effects of a crash are lessened if a train does derail.