Extra

Another Bay Area activist who was on board a flotilla of ships that were taken over by Israeli troops last month as they approached Gaza with a shipment of humanitarian aid is returning home tonight. 

Kathy Sheetz, a 63-year-old retired nurse from Richmond, is scheduled to arrive at San Francisco International Airport at 7:10 p.m. on American Airlines Flight 1669. 

The six ships in the Freedom Flotilla left Greece on May 24 and headed through international waters to bring medical equipment and other supplies to Gaza, according to Gene St. Onge, a 63-year-old Oakland resident who was on one of the ships. 

In the early morning hours of May 31, Israeli troops boarded one ship, the Mavi Marmara, and fired on its passengers, killing nine people and injuring dozens more. 

They boarded the other ships in the flotilla as well, but took them over with non-lethal force, activists said. After the takeover, the 700 people onboard the flotilla, including Sheetz, were taken to Israel.