You've got to love the passive tense*:
From AFP, with emphasis added:
Hundreds of activists are preparing to board aid ships bound for Gaza this week in defiance of an Israeli blockade and UN warnings and in spite of the violent end to an operation last year which left nine dead.
...
Nine Turks died when Israeli forces seized the Mavi Marmara.
They just died. No one killed them. Might have been heart attacks, for all we know.
AP is no better:
The warning reflected Israeli jitters about the international flotilla, which comes just over a year after a similar mission ended in the deaths of nine Turkish activists in clashes with Israeli naval commandos.
A little better; at least there were Israeli forces involved in "clashes." You know, the kind where one side is firing guns and the other side is trying to grab the guys with the guns. Not a word about how those activists died. Perhaps they slipped overboard and drowned in the midst of these "clashes." The reader will never know they were shot, some at point-blank range, some in the back, by Israeli commandos. Killed. Executed.
Who knows how the nine Turkish activists died? Actually AFP and AP know, but they're not telling.
*For language purists, I'm aware that these are not all technically examples of the passive tense. However, when someone "dies" without the cause being indicated, and there was someone or something who caused the death which goes unmentioned, this is the functional equivalent.
1:05 PM PT: Update: CNN's take:
The flotilla is meant to commemorate the one-year anniversary of a similar flotilla that resulted in a clash in international waters with Israeli navy commandos that left nine people -- including an American citizen -- dead.
Hell, from CNN, we might even imagine that some of those nine people were Israeli commandos. After all, it was a "clash."