ANKARA - Turkey is sending a ship carrying equipment to set up two field hospitals to Libya with 148 medical staff, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Wednesday, after a catastrophic flood killed thousands of people.

Turkey has already sent three aircraft to transport humanitarian aid as well as a rescue team and an 11-member medical team to Libya on Tuesday.

The ship that will depart from the western city of Izmir on Wednesday night will also transport ambulances and emergency response vehicles, Koca said in a statement posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Diplomats from the Turkish embassy in Tripoli arrived in the disaster area along with Turkish rescue and medical teams to coordinate aid efforts, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said.

Turkey is ready to provide further humanitarian aid to Libya, if needed, he told a news conference with British Foreign Minister James Cleverly.

The Turkish rescue team pulled six people from the rubble of flood-hit areas as of Wednesday morning, Fidan added.

(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever and Ece Toksabay; editing by Diane Craft)