Jolie free to meet Syrian refugees

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Goodwill ambassador … Angelina Jolie will visit camps on the Turkish border.

ISTANBUL: Turkey has agreed to allow Angelina Jolie to visit Syrian refugees who have fled violence and are camped on the Turkish side of the border.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Selcuk Unal, said the actress and goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees could arrive in Turkey today but the date remained uncertain.

Earlier, the Anatolia news agency said Jolie was expected to arrive in Istanbul today before travelling on to the border zone with Syria.

Turkey granted her permission to visit after assessing an application submitted on her behalf, Mr Unal said on Wednesday.

More than 8000 Syrians, roughly half of them children, have fled to Turkey to escape a crackdown on an anti-government uprising. They have been accommodated at three camps run by the Turkish Red Crescent in the border province of Hatay, local officials said.

Another two tent cities are being put up in the region to meet new arrivals, while those already accommodated receive three hot meals a day and psychological support for their children, officials said. About 60 wounded Syrians are in hospital.

The Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, travelled to Hatay on Wednesday for a first-hand assessment of the humanitarian operation there. He spoke to refugees at a fenced camp in Yayladagi.

In April, Jolie travelled to Tunisia during its refugee crisis as thousands fled from its war-torn neighbour, Libya. But her most recent headlines have been to do with an advertisement for the luxury label, Louis Vuitton, in which she is pictured without make-up in a wooden boat in a swamp in Cambodia.

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