Humanitarian aid for Gaza since Oct. 7 tops 42,000 tons
TÜRKİYE dispatched more than 42,000 tons of humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza by air and sea so far, according to the Foreign Ministry.
“Türkiye’s humanitarian aid to Gaza has reached 42,000 tons,” the Foreign Ministry said on X, adding that the country, as the secondlargest contributor of aid to Gaza, accounts for nearly a quarter of the total aid.
It stated that “an average of 127 tons of drinking water is delivered from Türkiye through Egypt to Gaza every week,” stressing that more than 400 Gazan patients and wounded individuals are also getting medical treatment in Türkiye.
It added that Ankara “will continue to stand by Gaza and the Palestinian people.”
Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Palestinian enclave since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, in which 1,139 Israelis were killed.
More than 33,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and more than 75,000 injured due to Israel’s attacks amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli army has also imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving most of the population, particularly residents of the north, on the verge of starvation.
The Israeli war, now in its 179th day, has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been
damaged or destroyed, according to the U.N.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which, in an interim ruling in January, ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
Since the new round of conflict broke in the region, Türkiye has sent thousands of tons of aid to Egypt for delivery to Gaza, either by military planes or vessels and has assured that deliveries will continue throughout Ramadan. Turkish charities organized nationwide campaigns to collect donations for Gazans.
Ankara has also been a virulent critic of Israel since the start of the
war and a staunch defender of the Palestinian cause, including holding talks with Palestinian, Israeli and Hamas officials.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called Israel a “terrorist state” and accused it of carrying out a genocide in Gaza. He has expressed full support for Hamas and rejected the Western stance of classifying it as a terrorist organization.
The Turkish public’s outrage too has been intense since Oct. 7, with mass protests nationwide condemning Israel’s relentless attacks, calling for a permanent cease-fire and public agencies, municipalities, universities and even Parliament taking part in a boycott of goods of Israeli origin.