Turkish aid agency distributes food aid to Gaza’s poor

By Nour Abu Aisha

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - Turkey's Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) on Thursday distributed food packages to needy families in the Gaza Strip.

Mahmoud al-Shurfa, the IHH’s spokesman in Gaza, said the relief agency had distributed 5,000 food packages to poor families and orphans across the coastal enclave, which remains the target of a decade-long Israeli-Egyptian blockade.

“The IHH will continue providing assistance [to needy Gazans] during the upcoming month of Ramadan,” al-Shurfa told Anadolu Agency.

Since 2007, the Gaza Strip’s roughly 2 million Palestinian inhabitants have groaned under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade that has deprived them of many basic commodities -- including food, fuel and medicine -- and which has largely destroyed the local economy.