At Istanbul meeting, Pakistan's Sharif, Turkiye's Erdogan call for ‘unimpeded' aid for Gaza
ISLAMABAD: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met in Istanbul on Sunday and called for an 'immediate ceasefire' in Gaza and access to 'unimpeded humanitarian aid' for the people of the besieged enclave.
Fresh Israeli military strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday. Israel launched its latest air and ground war in Gaza after a cross-border attack by the Hamas group on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people by Israeli tallies, with 251 hostages abducted into Gaza. The war has killed more than 53,900 Palestinians since, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the coastal strip.
The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death, according to the World Health Organization. Food security groups say more than 93 percent of children in Gaza, about 930,000, are at risk of famine. Using satellite data, the United Nations estimated in February that 69 percent of the structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.
'Prime Minister Sharif and President Erdoğan discussed pressing regional and international developments,' Sharif's office said in a statement after the two leaders held delegation-level talks in Istanbul.
'They also expressed deep concern over the grave humanitarian situation in Gaza, urgently calling for an immediate ceasefire and unimpeded humanitarian access to the affected Palestinian population.'
With most of Gaza's two million population squeezed into an ever narrowing zone on the coast and in the area around the southern city of Khan Younis by Israel's military operation, international pressure to get aid in quickly has ratcheted up.
Israel's initial blockade on Gaza, immediately following the October 7 attacks, prevented the entry of humanitarian aid for several weeks. As the war progressed, aid has been allowed in limited quantities.
Israel has recently announced that a new aid system, sponsored by the United States and run by private contractors, will soon begin operations from four distribution centers in the south of Gaza, but many details of how the system will work remain unclear. The UN has already said it will not work with the new system, which it says will leave aid distribution conditional on Israel's political and military aims.
Israel says its forces will only provide security for the centers and will not distribute aid themselves.
Even as the aid has begun to slowly trickle in, the Israeli military has continued its intensified ground and air operation launched last week, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would end with Israel taking full control of the Gaza Strip.
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