British news agency Reuters has cropped out knives and blood traces from at least two photos distributed by the IHH organization and showing the Navy raid on the Gaza-bound Marmara ship, the " Little Green Footballs " blog claimed.

Photos released by Turkish daily Hurriyet were distributed to foreign media by the news agencies. While Associated Press issued the photos untouched, Reuters cut the pictures thereby concealing the image of one of the boat's assailants holding a knife as well as a pool of blood.

"That’s a very interesting way to crop the photo," the blog stated. "Most people would consider that knife an important part of the context. Cropping out a knife, in a picture showing a soldier who’s apparently been stabbed, seems like a very odd editorial decision. Unless someone was trying to hide it."

In a later post, the blog shows a second photo which appeared to have been cropped as well. In this case too a knife held by one of the attackers was edited out.

"Now we have two pictures from the 'peace activists' that were cropped by someone at Reuters to remove knives in the hands of the activists, as they attempted to take soldiers hostage," the blog noted.

In response Reuters stressed that they did not intentionally edit the photos but innocently cut them in way that left the margins out. The agency also removed the photos from its server and replaced them with the pictures in their original form.

This is not the first instance in which Reuters has been found tampering with pictures. During the Second Lebanon War the news agency admitted to graphically editing a picture of Lebanon and adding in smoke above the houses shown. The Little Green Footballs blog exposed the matter in that case too.