Turkey to send 10,000 tonnes aid to Myanmar's Rohingya: Prez Erdogan
BY Agencies6 Sep 2017 4:46 PM GMT
Agencies6 Sep 2017 4:46 PM GMT
ANKARA: Turkey will provide 10,000 tonnes of aid to help Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in Myanmar, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.
"I spoke with (Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi) yesterday. They opened the doors after our call," Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party in Ankara.
He said Turkish aid agency TIKA was already delivering 1,000 tonnes of aid to camps for the displaced. "The second stage is 10,000 tonnes. Aid will be distributed," Erdogan said.
Around 150,000 Rohingyas have fled northwest Myanmar to Bangladesh since violence broke out on August 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base. The ensuing clashes and a military counter-offensive have killed at least 400 people. On Tuesday, Reuters news agency reported that hundreds of exhausted Rohingya arrived near the Bangladeshi border village of Shamlapur by boat.
The new arrivals — many of them sick or wounded — have strained the resources of aid agencies and communities already helping hundreds of thousands of refugees from previous spasms of violence.
A UN source working in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district said many of those arriving had no shelter, and aid agencies were racing to provide clean water and sanitation.
Erdogan condemned the escalating human rights violations against the Rohingya during a phone call with Aung San Suu Kyi earlier on Tuesday, Turkish presidential sources said.
"People have come with virtually nothing, so there has to be food," the source told Reuters news agency. "So this is now a huge concern - where is this food coming fro m for at least the elderly, the children and the women who have come over without their husbands?
"At the first stage, 100,000 [Rohingya] families on both sides of the [Myanmar-Bangladesh] border will receive aid."
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