With concerns mounting about the shortage of vital aid for Palestinians, the Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay) is scheduled to deliver more to the Gaza Strip.
Fatma Meriç Yılmaz, head of the Turkish charity, said in a social media post that they would send another batch of nearly 2,700 tons of aid supplies to the besieged enclave, where Israeli attacks have led to a severe shortage of food and other necessities.
She said loading aid materials onto an aid ship is ongoing, and the vessel will soon depart from Türkiye's Mersin province for Egypt. "Afterwards, our aid supplies will be transported to Gaza from the Rafah border crossing in trucks," she said.
More than 30,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the enclave's Health Ministry. More than half a million people in Gaza are on the brink of famine, the U.N. has warned. Aid distribution has been hampered by military operations, communications blackouts and fuel shortages.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Sunday that serious efforts were underway to reach a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip before Islam's holy month of Ramadan, which is set to start later this month. Fidan said at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF) that Türkiye supported views that established practices of the international community regarding Gaza should now be set aside in favor of taking unilateral action. "Delivering aid to Gaza while waiting for someone now means being complicit in the slow and silent deaths of more than 2 million people," he added.
The Turkish Red Crescent delivered more than 3,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza since the beginning of the new round of the Palestine-Israel conflict last October. Along with canned food and food packages, it delivered clothes, ambulances, hygiene kits and medical equipment to Palestinians via aid vessels. It also set up a mobile kitchen in Rafah for displaced Gazans.
