Two more ships carrying tons of grain left a Ukrainian Black Sea port on August 13, the Turkish Defense Ministry has said.
The Barbados-flagged Fulmar S left Ukraine's Chornomorsk port carrying 12,000 tons of corn to Turkey's southern Iskenderun Province, the ministry said.
The Marshall Island-flagged Thoe departed from the same port and headed to Turkey's Tekirdag carrying 3,000 tons of sunflower seeds, it added.
The departure of the two ships brings to 16 the number of vessels that have left the country loaded with grain in the two weeks since a UN-brokered deal to ensure safe passage for the vessels went into effect, the Ukrainian Infrastructure Ministry said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that in less than two weeks, Ukraine had managed to export the same amount of grain from three ports as it had done by road for the whole of July.
"This has already made it possible to reduce the severity of the food crisis," he said in his nightly video address on August 13.
Before the UN-brokered deal, the blockage of Ukrainian ports trapped tens of millions of tons of grain in the country, raising fears of severe food shortages and even outbreaks of famine in parts of the world.