Dozens of Countries, Groups Offer Assistance to Turkey and Syria

At least 40 countries and organizations have offered or already sent assistance to Turkey and Syria in the wake of the massive earthquake and the powerful aftershocks that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday, that has left at least 5,000 people dead. Among the countries and organizations that have offered help are China and that country’s Red Cross, India, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. Organizations include the European Union, NATO, the Red Crescent, the United Nations and the Norwegian Refugee Council. The aid offers continued to come in as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday afternoon declared a three-month state of emergency in 10 cities hard hit by the disaster.

Israel, which recently reestablished ties with Turkey and which remains in a state of war with Syria, on Monday evening sent a 150-person aid delegation, including doctors and rescue workers, from the Israel Defense Forces; on Tuesday morning, a delegation of dozens of Israeli doctors, medics, rescue operators and psycho-trauma specialists left for southern Turkey, on a flight organized by the United Hatzalah emergency response organization enroute to the hard-hit city of Gaziantep. More significantly, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he had approved sending aid to Syria, after receiving a request through diplomatic channels. Israel “received a request from a diplomatic source for humanitarian aid to Syria, and I approved it,” Netanyahu told lawmakers from his right-wing Likud party Monday afternoon, adding that the aid would be sent soon. Syria has denied that it requested aid from Israel.

Meanwhile, according to the Jerusalem Post, Iran, Russia and Iraq, as well as Hizbullah in Lebanon, are coming forward to help the hardest hit areas of Syria, populated mostly by Syrian rebels and internally displaced refugees due to the country’s civil war, despite siding with the regime of Bashar Assad in the conflict.

Arab and Gulf countries that have promised aid and rescue workers to Turkey and Syria include Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The United Nations said on Tuesday that damage to roads, fuel shortages and harsh winter weather in Syria were hampering its ability to respond to the earthquake.