A special "charity train" carrying 750 tons of emergency goods under the coordination of Turkey's government left for Afghanistan from the Turkish capital Ankara on Thursday.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced earlier this month that a charity train, carrying food, clothing, and health and emergency goods will be sent with the support of 10 NGOs under the coordination of Turkiye's disaster agency AFAD.
The train is bound for a journey of 4,168 kilometers (3,590 miles), Turkey's Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoglu said adding: The 47- wagons train will reach Afghanistan after first passing through Iran and Turkmenistan.
Afghanistan and Turkmenistan have been connected by rail since late 2016. The Afghan town of Andkhoy, 30 km from the Turkmenistan border is apparent destination of the Turkish charity train..
Citing the start of an Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul cargo train, Karaismailoglu said the charity train will travel the corridor in 16 days.
Tellingly, resuming operations after 10 years, the first Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul (ITI) train carrying goods from Pakistan to Turkey via Iran rolled into the capital Ankara on January 6. The ITI cargo train, hauling more than a dozen containers, started its journey from Islamabad on Dec. 21, 2021, and arrived in Ankara in around 13 days. The train has the capacity to carry 80,000 tons of goods.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu stressed that 12.9 million children in Afghanistan are in need of aid due to extreme weather conditions.
Turkey will always side with the people of Afghanistan, he said, adding: "For the past four years, we have been the country, the nation that has given the most aid in the world."
Aid agencies describe Afghanistan's plight as one of the world's most rapidly growing humanitarian crises.
According to UN humanitarian coordination office OCHA, half the population now faces acute hunger, over 9 million people have been displaced, and millions of children are out of school.
Previously, the UN and its partners launched a $4.4 billion funding appeal to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan in 2022.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has also warned that millions of Afghans are on the verge of death, urging the international community to release Afghanistan's frozen assets and jump-start its banking system.
Western nations led by the United States have frozen billions of dollars worth of Afghan banking assets and cut off development funding that once formed the backbone of Afghanistan's economy.
Some $9.5 billion in Afghan central bank reserves remain blocked outside the country, mainly in the United States, and international support given to the previous government has dried up since the Taliban took over power last August after the Western-backed government collapsed.
Acute hunger and mass displacements
The United Nations has said Afghanistan needs $5 billion in 2022 to avert the ongoing catastrophe.
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