Turkey will seek to rebuild Gaza if ceasefire achieved, says Erdogan
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Turkey will rebuild damaged infrastructure, hospitals and schools in Gaza if a ceasefire is achieved, the country's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, Turkish media reported on Saturday.
"If a ceasefire is reached, we will do whatever is necessary to compensate for the destruction caused by Israel," Erdogan said after returning from a trip to Berlin, where he held talks with German leaders.
"We will make efforts to rebuild the damaged infrastructure in Gaza and rebuild the destroyed schools, hospitals, water and energy facilities," he added.
Earlier this week, Erdogan called on Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce whether Israel had nuclear weapons or not and called for nuclear weapons inspections there.
"As Turkey, we are making this call. Israel's nuclear weapons must be inspected beyond doubt before it is too late. We will follow up on this," he said.
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He also said that the families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas had sent him a letter requesting that he intervened to secure their release. Turkey's intelligence agency had been activated to look into the issue, news agency Reuters reported.
Turkey's president had also said before that “Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, 'mujahideen' waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”
Slamming the West for supporting Israel's retaliation against Hamas, he had said, “Western tears shed for Israel are a manifestation of fraud." Meanwhile, Turkey foreign minister Hakan Fidan said that Israel committed "a crime against humanity" in its war in Gaza.
"Targeting our Palestinian brothers, including children, patients and the elderly, even in schools, hospitals and mosques, is a crime against humanity," he said.
Israel continues to bomb Gaza City and the majority of the dead on both sides have been civilians. The war has claimed the lives of around 1, 200 Israelis and nearly 12, 000 Palestinians.
