The UN agency for Palestinian refugees is set to open an office in Ankara within weeks, its chief, Philippe Lazzarini, said on a visit to the Turkish capital on Thursday.
“We have signed the final agreement with the government of Turkey, and this time it has been also endorsed by the parliament,” he told reporters, adding that it was “a question of weeks” until it opened.
The move came a day after the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said it was going through a “dire” financial crisis that had forced it to fire 571 members of its Gazan staff who had continued working for it after being evacuated from the war-ravaged territory.
UNRWA said the “extremely difficult” decision was down to a financial crisis sparked by a fall in the voluntary contributions it relies on following a campaign of increasingly harsh criticism and attacks by Israel.
For more than seven decades the agency has provided aid and assistance to Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and was still operating there, “despite many, many constraints,” Lazzarini said.
© Agence France-Presse