Turkiye Ready to Take Over Cancer Patients from Gaza

Faza – Government of Turkiye has conveyed that its country ready to take over cancer patients from Gaza. Turkiye will provide medical treatment for the patients. 

Two planes carrying patients, most of them children, landed at Ankara airport shortly after 00:30 local time.

Turkiye has sent a ship laden with materials for field or mobile hospitals, ambulances and generators to Egypt to treat civilians who managed to escape the Israeli military operation against Hamas militants in the enclave.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said that 27 patients had been flown to Turkiye from Egypt, along with 13 escorts, without specifying whether they were doctors or family members. He also revealed that the cancer patients have been able to cross from Gaza to Egypt through the Rafah border crossing.

Koca was in Egypt to discuss sending humanitarian aid to Gaza, and said that the patients were able to be transferred to Turkey thanks to coordination between Turkiye, Egypt and Israel. 

He also said that Turkey is waiting for Egypt's permission to open its first field hospital at the Rafah crossing.

"I hope that in the near future our efforts will go in this direction, we can establish a field hospital in Gaza, in the area near the Rafah gate," Koca continued. 

As information, Turkiye has long championed the Palestinian cause and has recently stepped up its verbal attacks on Israel over the increasing number of civilian casualties in its military operations.

Speaking before members of his Islamist-rooted ruling party, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel a terror state that commits genocide.