Spanish Navy Rams Greenpeace Boat

(Canary Islands)

Spanish navy boats protecting an oil drilling ship rammed Greenpeace boats during a protest, leaving one activist with a broken leg and another with minor cuts.

Dramatic footage filmed off the Canary Islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura on Saturday shows the moment when a navy rhib – a fast rigid hull inflatable boat – appeared to deliberately collide with a Greenpeace rhib which was approaching the oil ship Rowan Renaissance.

Matilda Brunetti, a 23 year-old Italian, can be heard screaming in pain in the video as her leg was broken and she was thrown into the water. According to a colleague, she then received cuts to her legs from a propeller, before she was taken by the Spanish navy to a hospital in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, where she is now recovering.

The Greenpeace captain said, "We will not allow reckless oil drilling…."