Turkey, Qatar send 250 tons of flour to Syria

By Cem Genco

HATAY, Turkey (AA) - 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.