BAGHDAD Two planes carrying humanitarian aid, one Turkish and the other Syrian, landed in Baghdad on Wednesday in the latest solidarity flights against decade-old sanctions, an AFP correspondent said. The Turkish plane, the second from Turkey to land at Saddam International Airport in three days, landed at 0820 GMT. The Syrian plane, the second in four days, touched down five minutes later.
The two delegations were welcomed at the airport by several high-ranking Iraqi officials, the INA news agency reported. A humanitarian flight from Egypt was expected in Baghdad later Wednesday, according to Mohammad Samy, head of the "popular delegation for the lifting of the embargo on Iraq", a nongovernmental organization in Cairo. An aircraft from Istanbul carrying a surgeon among a Turkish delegation landed at the Iraqi capital on Monday. And a Syrian plane flew into the Iraqi capital on Sunday for the first time in 20 years, as part of a campaign of solidarity flights against a UN air embargo.