The first batch of medicine will be leave for Syria on Thursday, to help victims affected by the devastating earthquakes that struck southern Turkey and north Syria a few weeks ago, the volunteerism commission in Cyprus announced.

The commission said in an announcement that the items will be sent to Lebanon first, then they will taken from there onwards to Syria.

A second batch of medicines will leave on Friday, which were donated by the health ministry.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the national guard began collecting the donations made across all of Cyprus in various districts. The volunteerism commission said that the campaign, launched last week, will end on Friday.

The volunteerism commissioner’s office said that the response of the people, once again, has been touching, since a large amount of aid has been collected, both clothing and food as well as personal hygiene items.

All the items will be sent to the Limassol port, where they will be prepared to be sent onwards to Turkey and Syria.

In an announcement later in the day, Cyprus airways said that it delivered the first 13 tonnes of humanitarian aid successfully.

The company said that the cargo included 10 tonnes of medicines donated by the Medochemie company, as well as hundreds of boxes of baby food donated by the P.T. Hadjigeorgiou company, along with other goods donated by citizens and the Cyprus Airways team as a whole, while in the following days, mainly clothes, food and blankets will be transported.

The Strovolos municipality also thanked all the Cypriots that have donated items at the municipal offices.

They said in an announcement that over a thousand boxes of items have been collected at their offices.

On Wednesday, the first UN truck with humanitarian aid donated by people in of Cyprus in cooperation with Turkish Cypriot relief efforts departed the island for Turkey.

The aid was collected by the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unifcyp) and is destined to victims of the earthquake in Turkey.

Schools, embassies, NGOs, organised groups and private citizens have contributed to the effort.

Unficyp started accepting humanitarian aid at Ledra Palace hotel on February 12.

“In the last few days we have been receiving supplies from local people and local agencies,” said Major Gavin Randell of Unficyp.

“Turkish Cypriot authorities will now be able to take them where they are needed most.”

He added that the Unficyp has received more than 100 boxes of supplies. More than half of them are blankets and about a quarter of them are clothes. The rest of the donations consist of food and sanitary supplies.

More specifically, the supplies include dry food, water, sleeping bags, blankets, winter clothes and shoes, personal hygiene items, detergents, cleaning supplies, children’s diapers, toys, and dog food.

The humanitarian aid collected is estimated at around two tonnes.

Randell said the supplies are desperately needed both in Turkey and Syria right now.

He added that the humanitarian aid will be shipped from the occupied port of Famagusta.

The donations at Ledra Palace continue.