Egypt FM makes rare Turkey, Syria trip after quake
Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will head to Turkey and Syria on Monday morning, his office said, for the first such visit in a decade of tense relations with both countries. The trip aims to show "solidarity with the two countries and their brotherly peoples" after the devastating earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey earlier this month, a statement said. Shoukry's visit is the latest example of Arab outreach to the internationally-isolated Syrian government. The 7.8-magnitude quake that struck on February 6 killed more than 46,000 people in both countries. On February 7, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, in the first official exchange between the two leaders. Shoukry also spoke with his Syrian counterpart. The same day, Sisi spoke with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in one of their first diplomatic contacts under a recent rapprochement. A series of plane and navy shipments of "hundreds of tonnes of medical aid" followed, according to the Egyptian authorities, along with "a technical team" supporting rescue operations with the White Helmets in northwest Syria, the civilian group said. Assad has been politically isolated in the region since the start of the 12-year war in Syria. While Cairo and Damascus have largely maintained relations during the conflict, the Cairo-based Arab League suspended Syria in 2011 and some other Arab countries have severed ties with it. (AFP)