deputy chairman Yaşar Kutluay said "we sent our team to Japan which also went to Haiti due to the earthquake and to Pakistan due to the floods and lastly went to Tunisia and Libya due to the recent developments. Our team will contact with Japanese authorities to organize relief works. Our team will bring sonar system and search and rescue equipments." The IHH aid team conducted relief efforts in Sendai which was most heavily devastated by the earthquake and took relief to around 5.000 people. Güzel said Sendai has turned into a ghost city in the aftermath of the quake disaster and ensuing tsunami and it may take long years for Japan to recover from the aftereffects of the disaster. Güzel noted that the humanitarian crisis in Japan may deteriorate if international aid is not provided to the country. Freeing Czech tourists in Pakistan, March 2015 As reported on 28 March 2015, the IHH secured the release of two Czech tourists, Antonie Chrástecká and Hana Humpálová, following two months of intense negotiations. They were kidnapped near Taftan, Pakistan, by an al Qaeda-linked armed group on 13 March 2013, while travelling overland from Europe to India. IHH and the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid In January 2010, the Free Gaza Movement and İHH announced a joint venture to send ten vessels to the Gaza strip in the spring of 2010, a flotilla to be further joined by organizations from Greece, Ireland and Sweden. On 30 May 2010, a flotilla of six ships carrying 663 activists from 37 nations rendezvoused near Cyprus and set sail for Gaza. The stated intention of the Gaza flotilla, like for earlier flotillas organized by the Free Gaza Movement, was to break through Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip and to deliver humanitarian supplies. The İHH spent more than $2 million on the ships. İHH activists were set apart from other activists involved in the mission by a willingness to resist Israeli forces. On 31 May 2010, after the IHH refused that the Israel Defense Forces will check the ship's cargo in Ashdod port, Israeli forces intercepted the fleet in the international waters. On the MV Mavi Marmara, one of the ships owned and operated by the İHH, boarding Israeli forces came under coordinated armed attack. In the clashes, nine activists were killed (Eight Turkish nationals and a Turkish-American), and dozens of activists and seven Israeli commandos were