Türkiye Sends Field Hospital Aid Ship to Egypt for Gaza

09 November 2023, Palestinian Territories, Rafah: Palestinians inspect the destroyed house of the Ashour family, following an Israeli airstrike on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa
09 November 2023, Palestinian Territories, Rafah: Palestinians inspect the destroyed house of the Ashour family, following an Israeli airstrike on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa
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Türkiye Sends Field Hospital Aid Ship to Egypt for Gaza

09 November 2023, Palestinian Territories, Rafah: Palestinians inspect the destroyed house of the Ashour family, following an Israeli airstrike on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa
09 November 2023, Palestinian Territories, Rafah: Palestinians inspect the destroyed house of the Ashour family, following an Israeli airstrike on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/dpa

Türkiye said on Friday it had sent a ship loaded with field hospital equipment, ambulances and generators to Egypt to treat war casualties from Gaza, where Israeli's devastating siege has caused a humanitarian crisis with medical care collapsing.
"A total of 51 containers of medical supplies, generators and 20 ambulances, with necessary permissions, were loaded onto a ship from Izmir's Alsancak port and sent to Egypt," Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
"As part of the aid, a fully equipped heavy-climate type field hospital with operating rooms and intensive-care units and inflatable type field hospitals were sent," he said.
Footage shared by Koca in a post on social media platform X, showed ambulances, wheelchairs, boxes with medical supplies and other containers being loaded onto the ship.
The ship was expected to reach Egypt's Al Arish port on Saturday, Koca said, with the field hospitals and ambulances to be deployed to Gaza or points closest to its Rafah border crossing with Egypt in coordination with Egyptian authorities.
Earlier on Friday, President Tayyip Erdogan said Türkiye had made preparations to take injured Palestinians and some patients with chronic illnesses from Gaza to its hospitals for treatment.
Speaking to reporters after a visit to Uzbekistan, he also said Türkiye will make efforts to increase pressure on Israel to ensure Palestinians injured by the hostilities between Israel and Gaza's ruling Hamas group could be evacuated abroad.
Evacuations from Gaza through Rafah began on Nov. 1 for an estimated 7,000 foreign passport holders, dual nationals and their dependents, as well as a limited number of people needing urgent medical treatment.
Some of Gaza's hospitals have shut down after running out of fuel to run operating theaters, while others are struggling with an unprecedented influx of wounded people and a dearth of pain relief medication.
France said on Monday it was in talks with Egypt to set up a military medical facility on the ground near Gaza that would include surgical capacities for seriously wounded people.
Egypt has itself prepared a field hospital at Sheikh Zuweid, 15 km (9 miles) from Rafah, to treat evacuees from the fighting.
Last month, Türkiye sent cargo planes carrying generators, medical equipment and supplies for Gaza via the Rafah crossing.
Rafah has been the only entry point for humanitarian aid going into Gaza. On Wednesday, 106 trucks carrying food, medicine and water entered, bringing the total number since Oct. 21 to 756, according to the United Nations.
But the UN and international aid groups say the aid provided is nowhere near the scale needed to mitigate disastrous shortages of food, drinking water, medicines and fuel in the densely populated enclave.



Lebanon's Caretaker Prime Minister Visits Military Positions in the Country's South

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)
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Lebanon's Caretaker Prime Minister Visits Military Positions in the Country's South

Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (C) arrives with cabinet ministers for a meeting at Benoit Barakat barracks in Tyre, southern Lebanon, 07 December 2024. (EPA)

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has begun a tour of military positions in the country’s south, almost a month after a ceasefire deal that ended the war between Israel and the Hezbollah group that battered the country.
Najib Mikati on Monday was on his first visit to the southern frontlines, where Lebanese soldiers under the US-brokered deal are expected to gradually deploy, with Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops both expected to withdraw by the end of next month, The Associated Press said.
Mikati’s tour comes after the Lebanese government expressed its frustration over ongoing Israeli strikes and overflights in the country.
“We have many tasks ahead of us, the most important being the enemy's (Israel's) withdrawal from all the lands it encroached on during its recent aggression,” he said after meeting with army chief Joseph Aoun in a Lebanese military barracks in the southeastern town of Marjayoun. “Then the army can carry out its tasks in full.”
The Lebanese military for years has relied on financial aid to stay functional, primarily from the United States and other Western countries. Lebanon’s cash-strapped government is hoping that the war’s end and ceasefire deal will bring about more funding to increase the military’s capacity to deploy in the south, where Hezbollah’s armed units were notably present.
Though they were not active combatants, the Lebanese military said that dozens of its soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes on their premises or patrolling convoys in the south. The Israeli army acknowledged some of these attacks.