Turkey, Qatar send 250 tons of flour to Syria

By Cem Genco

HATAY, Turkey

Turkey's Humanitarian Relief Foundation, or IHH, and the Sheikh Thani bin Abdullah Foundation for Humanitarian Services, RAF have sent 250 tons of flour to war-torn Syria, the IHH secretary general said on Friday.

A 50-truck convoy departed from Turkey’s southern border province of Hatay and headed to Syria’s Aleppo and Idlib provinces, IHH Secretary General Yavuz Dede said.

Last month, a UN aid convoy was attacked as it was about to enter Aleppo, where 275,000 civilians need humanitarian assistance.

The attack in Urum al-Kubra, west of Aleppo, killed the head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, as well as aid staff and drivers in a 31-truck convoy.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011 when the regime of Bashar al-Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests.

The Syrian Center for Policy Research, a Beirut-based NGO, has put the total death toll from the five-year conflict at more than 470,000.