GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli forces intercepted and were following an Irish-owned ship bound for Gaza on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the campaign group supporting the ship said.

“They are being followed,” Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza group said by telephone. She said earlier that the Rachel Corrie was some 55 km (35 miles) west of Gaza in the Mediterranean.

Al Jazeera television quoted a journalist aboard the vessel saying: “We can see some Israeli ships a little away from us.

“They are following us. There has been no contact.”

An Israeli military spokeswoman said she had no information.

Israel had said it would not let the ship through, five days after a convoy of six was halted, including a Turkish ship on which 9 men were killed by Israeli commandos who stormed aboard.

Israel has said it would accept the goods aboard the Rachel Corrie at its port of Ashdod, for onward land delivery to Gaza, but the activists have insisted they will dock in Gaza.

“They are not going into Ashdod,” Berlin said, adding that only if the Israeli navy seized the ship would that happen.

The vessel is named after an American pro-Palestinian activist killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

Among those aboard the Rachel Corrie, campaigners said, were Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire from Northern Ireland and Denis Halliday, an Irish former senior official at the United Nations.