ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday warned that it would be unacceptable for Palestinians to die from the want of a “hunk of bread or a mouthful of water.”
Erdogan’s warning, made during a speech in Istanbul, came amid a mounting chorus of international criticism of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which has triggered a humanitarian crisis.
“No one endowed with a minimum of human dignity can accept this cruelty, in which dozens of innocent people die every day because they cannot find a hunk of bread or a mouthful of water,” he said.
Erdogan is a frequent critic of Israel but his declaration came as Israel faced several demands from United Nations agencies and international capitals to protect civilian lives and to allow aid into Gaza.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Israeli forces “must stop killing people” at food distribution points, and UN rights chief Volker Turk warned Israel that it was possibly violating international law.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said that Israeli strikes had killed 15 people in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, after the World Health Organization said that troops had invaded its staff residence.
Turkiye’s Erdogan says Gazans must not die for ‘hunk of bread’
https://arab.news/4e3qj
Turkiye’s Erdogan says Gazans must not die for ‘hunk of bread’
- Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday warned that it would be unacceptable for Palestinians to die from the want of a “hunk of bread or a mouthful of water“
Trial opens in Tunisia of NGO workers accused of aiding migrants
- Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society”
TUNIS: Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society” in the country.
Six staff members of the Tunisian branch of the France Terre d’Asile aid group, along with 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse, face charges of sheltering migrants and facilitating their “illegal entry and residence.”
If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
A former head of Terre d’Asile Tunisie, Sherifa Riahi, is among the accused and has been detained for more than 19 months, according to her lawyer Abdellah Ben Meftah.
He told AFP that the accused had carried out their work as part of a project approved by the state and in “direct coordination” with the government.
Amnesty denounced what it described as a “bogus criminal trial” and called on Tunisian authorities to drop the charges.
“They are being prosecuted simply for their legitimate work providing vital assistance and protection to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in precarious situations,” Sara Hashash, Amnesty’s deputy MENA chief, said in the statement.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is set to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with Tunis.
