Turkish Red Crescent distributes aid to 1,500 Syrians

ISTANBUL The Turkish Red Crescent aid organization, Kizilay, has distributed basic aid to more than a thousand Syrians who were forced to flee the Barze neighborhood of the capital Damascus. Some 1,500 people -- mostly children, women and elders -- were welcomed by aid workers in the western Syrian city of Hama, according to a statement released Wednesday by Kizilay. Packages of humanitarian aid including canned food, milk, water and diapers were handed out. “While Kizilay continues easing the life for around 3 million refugees inside Turkey, it is doing its best to keep 7 million internally displaced Syrians alive,” Kerem Kinik, chairman of Kizilay, said in the statement. The financial amount of the Turkish Red Crescent’s humanitarian aid has exceeded 2 billion Turkish Liras (around $560 million) since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, according to the organization. Turkey, hosting more Syrian refugees than any other country in the world, says it has spent around $25 billion helping and sheltering refugees during that time.