GAZA, Palestine 

A water desalination plant funded by a Turkish aid organization was inaugurated on Saturday near the Gaza Strip’s Al-Shati refugee camp.

The project will allow the purification of seawater with a view to providing some 5,000 camp residents with fresh drinking water.

The plant was funded by Turkey’s Ribat humanitarian relief association, in coordination with Gaza’s Ard al-Salam association.

Ard al-Salam Director Mohamed al-Harazin told Anadolu Agency that the new plant would provide camp residents with some 25 thousand cubic meters of drinking water each day.

The provision of fresh drinking water remains problematic in the war-battered Gaza Strip, which is home to some 1.8 million people.