Turkish aid agencies send aid to Syrian families

By Oguz Pakin and Ridvan Korkulutas

HATAY/KILIS, Turkey

Turkish aid agencies reached out to over a thousand Syrian families in Turkey and Syria, giving them food, clothing, bedding and cleaning supplies, an aid agency official told Anadolu Agency Wednesday.

According to Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) official, the agency dispatched over 21,000 aid trucks to hundreds of Syrians within the last seven months.

The official said the aid was taken from Hatay’s Reyhanli district to Syria via the Cilvegozu and Oncupinar border crossings.

Another aid organization Iyilikder also delivered aid to 500 Syrian families in Turkey's border province of Kilis over the past week, an Iyilikder official told Anadolu Agency on Wednesday.

According to the official, the relief packages were dispatched to Syrian families by local volunteers.

Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed and millions more displaced by the conflict.

Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country in the world. The country has spent around $25 billion helping and sheltering refugees since the beginning of the Syrian civil war.