ANKARA (Reuters) – More than 100 evacuees from Gaza are set to arrive in Turkey on Monday, including dozens of people who will receive medical treatment there, Turkey’s health minister and a foreign ministry source said.
Sixty-one patients, accompanied by some 49 relatives, arrived in Egypt from Gaza on Sunday evening and were scheduled to fly to Ankara on Monday morning after spending the night at Al Arish hospital, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
He said last week that Ankara wanted to bring as many of the nearly 1,000 cancer patients from Gaza to Turkey as possible. The first 27 patients arrived in Ankara last Thursday.
Separately, a group of 87 people, consisting of Turks, Turkish Cypriots and their relatives, arrived in Egypt from Gaza on Sunday and was set to fly to Istanbul on Monday evening, a foreign ministry source said.
Forty-four Turks who travelled from Gaza to Egypt at the weekend arrived in Istanbul on Sunday, media reports said.
The foreign ministry source also said that if conditions on the ground permit, Turkey aimed to get around 100 more people out of Gaza on Monday.
A month ago, Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmet Yildiz said some 700 people, including Turkish, Palestinian, and northern Cypriot citizens, had applied to Turkey to be evacuated from Gaza. Around 300 of them were Turkish citizens.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)
