An aid activist who was aboard the freedom flotilla carrying aid to Gaza has spoken of her distress on visiting a critically ill comrade in a Turkish hospital.

Paveen Yaqub — a former Greenhead High School, Keighley, pupil — has just returned from a two-week pilgrimage to Turkey, where she visited a graveside, sought closure and held a bedside vigil for young Suleyman Ugur, who was shot aboard the Mavi Marmara ship when it was raided by Israeli soldiers.

The incident happened in May, when nine Turkish nationals were killed and many others injured as Israeli commandos stormed a flotilla carrying aid like medical supplies and pencil crayons to Gaza. Miss Yaqub, 39, who has a brother living in Riddlesden, had raised thousands of pounds in aid for the trip — which set off from Cyprus — and had wanted to see it delivered safely to the people it was meant for.

But instead she experienced violence, gas bombs and bloodshed days into her journey.

Suleyman Ugur was the man she came across in the medical area after the firing had begun. She held his hand while he lay critically injured from a gunshot wound to the head and then took the brave step of going back on deck to ask the Israeli soldiers for urgent medical help for him.

When Paveen returned to Holmfirth, where she lives, it took her weeks to track down Suleyman and discover his fate.

Two weeks ago she set off on a mission to be reunited with him and go back to Turkey, where many freedom flotilla activists have since returned to try to understand what happened that night. She told the Keighley News: “I went to visit Suleyman in a hospital in Ankara. I needed to go and see him and his family.

“He is in a critical way, they think he might be brain-damaged.

“He received operations on his head to help him in Israel but the Turkish doctors are having trouble getting his medical notes to find out exactly what, so it is hard for them to help him.”

Miss Yaqub, a local government worker in Oldham, also visited the grave of 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, an American-Turkish national who was shot several times as he filmed the commando raid. She said: “That was a powerful moment. I remember Furkan as being timid with such an amazing smile and I met his family, who said they were proud of him.”