A day after Israeli commandoes raided an aid flotilla seeking to breach the blockade of Gaza, Israel held hundreds of activists seized aboard the convoy on Tuesday as news reports said activists may be planning a fresh attempt to ferry supplies to the Hamas-run enclave.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the Israeli military said troops clashed with two militants who infiltrated from Gaza, killing them both. While such occurrences are almost routine along the volatile border between Israel and Gaza, the incident underscored the tensions seizing the region after Monday\u2019s confrontation at sea, which strained relations between Israel and the United States just as American-sponsored proximity talks involving Palestinians and Israelis were getting under way.<\/p>\n
The developments in Israel and Gaza came hours after the United Nations Security Council condemned \u201cacts\u201d\u009d leading to the loss of life in Israel\u2019s operation in international waters on Monday that claimed the lives of nine civilians, many of them Turks. After hours of late-night negotiations, the Security Council urged an impartial inquiry \u201d\u201d a call echoed in a separate forum by Russia and the European Union on Tuesday at a meeting of senior officials in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.<\/p>\n