The soup kitchen, which was set up by Hope Caravan Foundation in Kahramanmaraş, provides three meals a day to up to 40,000 people.
Speaking to Ilke News Agency regarding their humanitarian aid efforts in earthquake-stricken areas, Sabri Yıldırım, an official of Hope Caravan Foundation, said: We came from Van about a week ago with a team of 20 people. Thank God, we have also established our soup kitchen for 3 days. Our friends work selflessly here. Chef friends and their assistants serve here. Each of them showed self-sacrifice and quit their jobs and came here to help. Some are civil servants, and some work in the private sector. May Allah be pleased with them.”
“We also have staff members working in aid tents. We serve free meals to up to 40,000 people a day. We start to provide meals at 7 in the morning, and our food distribution continues until 12 at night,” Yıldırım added.
A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern Turkey and northern Syria in the early hours of the morning on February 6.
There were at least 44,300 deaths and over 108, 000 people were injured across the ten most affected provinces in Turkey, including some casualties also in adjacent Elazığ and Batman provinces.
At least 13.5 million people and 4 million buildings have been affected. Thousands were trapped under rubble when buildings collapsed.
The Ministry of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change conducted damage inspections for 763,000 buildings; at least 41,791 buildings in 10 Turkish provinces were heavily damaged or destroyed, leaving about 150,000 people homeless.
Immediately after the earthquake, Hope Caravan Foundation, European Orphan Hand, Orphans Foundation, and IHO EBRAR launched a humanitarian aid campaign to aid the earthquake-stricken people. (ILKHA)