Turkey sends aid train to flood-hit Pakistan

A train carrying humanitarian aid left the Turkish capital of Ankara for flood-hit Pakistan on Tuesday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

The train is loaded with humanitarian aid collected by Turkey' s Sabah (daily newspaper)-ATV (TV channel) Group and Turkish Red Crescent.

The aid is comprised of 300 prefabricated houses, 2,000 food parcels, 930 sacks of flour, hygienic materials, dried food, diapers and potable water.

"Pakistan has supported Turkey whenever Turkey faced a hard time whatever its (Pakistan's) conditions were," Turkey's State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek was quoted as saying when seeing off the train from Ankara.

Pakistani Ambassador to Turkey Tariq Azizuddin said floods affected some 20 million people and killed around 2,000.

Azizuddin said 165,000 square kilometers of area was flooded, 1 million houses were demolished, and the flood left 4.6 million people homeless.

According to the ambassador, 3.5 million children were under contagious disease threat, and hundreds of kilometers of highways and energy lines were inundated by floods.

Azizuddin said Pakistan needed 12 to 15 billion U.S. dollars for reconstruction.

Source: Xinhua