12 January 2018•Update: 12 January 2018
HATAY/KIRKLARELI, Turkey
A Turkish aid agency has set up an accommodation center in Syria's northern Idlib countryside for Syrians fleeing ongoing violence and airstrikes in eastern Hama, according to a foundation official on Friday.
The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), one of the country’s leading aid groups, completed the center in Kafar Lousin village.
The agency's media adviser, Selim Tosun, told Anadolu Agency in Turkey's border province of Hatay that 200 families had been placed in the tent camp.
“Families coming [to the area] underwent health screening at a mobile health center. A [mobile] school was also established for the children," he said, adding water tankers were meeting the needs of clean drinking water.
Tosun said the children were obviously traumatized following the bombardment that they witnessed.
"There were some children, who fled to their tents after getting scared of the sound of an electricity generator that we used," he said.
The IHH also plans to set up new tent camps in Babushka region, near Idlib.
Meanwhile, Turkish Red Crescent, locally known as Kizilay, sent on Friday two trucks loaded with 200 tents from Turkey's northwestern Kirklareli province to Idlib countryside.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity. This led to a military conflict between the Syrian opposition groups and the Assad regime over the war-torn country’s territory.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict mainly by regime airstrikes targeting opposition-held areas while millions more were displaced. During the conflict, Assad regime was accused many times by many international actors of targeting Syrian civilians by chemical weapons.
Reporting by Cem Genco and Ozgun Tiran:Writing by Nilay Kar
