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Turkish president urges joint efforts to solve humanitarian crisis

Xinhua, May 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on world countries Tuesday to joint hands and fix the global humanitarian crisis.

Otherwise, "the world will cease being safe for everyone," warned the Turkish leader during his televised speech at the third Islamic ministers conference in charge of water in Istanbul.

The first-ever World Humanitarian Summit is going to be held on May 23-24 in Istanbul, and is expected to attract around 6,000 participants including a number of heads of state.

Erdogan urged the Islamic world in his speech to play a bigger role in solving the Syrian refugee crisis, saying "I believe we will witness a more responsive approach in the coming period."

Turkey is hosting over three million Syrian and Iraqi refugees alone and "none are starving," he added.

The president warned that "murky alliances" and "weapons smugglers" established in Syria and Iraq under the Islamic State (IS) pretext will lead to sizable world problems.

He also blamed weapons manufacturing countries for arms trading with terrorist groups.

Referring to the continued IS rocket attacks against the Turkish border province of Kilis, Erdogan said "We will solve the IS issue ourselves if we do not receive external assistance."

Kilis has been under frequent IS rocket fire since mid-January, with at least 20 people killed.

Turkey reportedly sent a special forces squad to IS-held areas in northern Syria on earlier this month to destroy several missile launchers.

Erdogan renewed his message to the international community to establish a safe zone in northern Syria to protect civilians from IS attacks.

"I shared this with the U.S. president, Russia when relations were good, and with other Western countries," he said, adding that none of the countries has yet responded. Endit