Yesterday (16 July) the aid agency “Wings of Help” has sent 20 tons of children’s food together with medical equipment to Mosul in Iraq. The aid supplies were flown on board a Silkway Boeing 747-8 freighter from Hahn Airport in Germany to the Azeri capital of Baku, where the goods were transshipped and flown onward to Erbil in northern Iraq.
Erbil had been chosen as final destination for the airlift because commercial flights into Mosul are not possible at this point due to the massive destructions of the city and its infrastructure
after ISIS’ three year-lasting reign of terror followed by a nine-month siege of a U.S.-led coalition to drive the Islamic terrorists out. A week ago, Mosul was finally freed but much of the city
is reduced to rubble with the airport severely damaged by ISIS deposited booby-traps and explosives.
100,000 refugees in Mosul need humanitarian support
“That’s why the relief goods had to be flown to Erbil in the northern part of Iraq from where they’ll be forwarded by truck to the Hassan Sham refuge near the city of Mosul,” illustrates
spokesperson Hanna Hammer of Frankfurt-Hahn Airport the routing. Both cities are only 92 kilometers apart with the Erbil-Musul Road that links them being in fairly good condition, despite the
three year-lasting terrorist regime of ISIS and the subsequent fierce battle to drive the Islamists out again.
"Nearly 100,000 refugees from Mosul are currently living in Hassan Sham,” reports Frank Franke, president of the relief organization “Wings of Help.” He and other members of the aid agency were
on site a few weeks ago to get an undisguised impression of the local circumstances. “The situation there is shattering,” reports Franke. “Medical care has collapsed completely. The food supply
is so scarce that children have to eat boiled pulp from cut-up cardboard boxes in order to have something in the stomach at all.”
His aid organization had already begun sending medical goods from Frankfurt Rhine-Main Airport to Mosul. This way, eleven consignments have been delivered, but each time it was only a few tons of
supplies and medical or technical equipment.
Successful cooperation
In contrast, the now accomplished humanitarian Mosul mission is the by far largest and most important single project initiated by “Wings of Help” up to now. “We are proud to have launched 20 tons
of aid worth €600,000 from Frankfurt-Hahn Airport yesterday,” exclaims Wings Chief Herr Franke. “These are 130 Euro-pallets containing infant nutrition complemented by an ultrasound device used
to treat injured people,” he stated. His organization’s cooperation with carrier Silkway and the team of Frankfurt-Hahn Airport was a successful premiere, praises Franke. Indirectly, he announced
further humanitarian missions to be uplifted at Hahn. “The airport can become a gateway for humanitarian aid flown to the Middle East.”
However, the 20 tons of supply now forwarded are no more than a drop in the ocean of poverty, hunger and despair, but at least they send a message of hope for things taking a turn to the better
in tortured Mosul.
Heiner Siegmund
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