Aleppo's Bana thanks Turkish foreign minister for gift

By Zuhal Demirci

ANKARA (AA) – Seven-year-old Bana Alabed, recently evacuated to safety in Turkey from the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo, has thanked Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu for gifts presented during her time in Ankara.

Bana, who made world headlines thanks to her tweets from the besieged Syrian city, thanked Mevlut Cavusoglu for a tablet computer.

She had been among the thousands of people evacuated on Monday from Aleppo. She earlier appealed to Cavusoglu for help in escaping the besieged city.

"Hello my friend Mr. Cavusoglu, thank you for gift. I love you,” she said in a video message posted on her Twitter account Thursday.

Cavusoglu later replied: “I love you too, my best friend Bana.”

On Wednesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife, Emine Erdogan, welcomed Bana and her family to the presidential palace in the Turkish capital Ankara.

Erdogan, accompanied by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, listened to the family’s account of their suffering in the devastated Syrian city.

Bana, her mother, father and two little brothers arrived in Turkey earlier this week.

She used to post messages on her Twitter account -- along with her mother -- about frequent aerial attacks by Syrian regime forces and Russian warplanes on opposition-held parts of Aleppo.

Bana, who had boasted some 200,000 Twitter followers, saw her home bombed on Nov. 27, but she and her mother survived the attack.