German foreign minister to travel to Israel for talks on deescalating Iran conflict

By Anadolu Staff

BERLIN (AA) - German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she plans to travel to Israel later Tuesday for talks on how to deescalate the conflict with Iran.

“I will assure our Israeli partners of Germany's full solidarity and we will talk about how further escalation with more and more violence can be prevented. It is now important to stop Iran without encouraging further escalation,” she said at a news conference with her Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi.

Germany, a staunch ally of Israel, has repeatedly condemned the Iranian air attack on the Jewish state.

Safadi warned Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu not to use the Iran conflict as an excuse to divert attention from the dramatic crisis in the Gaza Strip.

He stressed the Gaza war must “not be forgotten,” and urged more international pressure on the Israeli government to help end the war.

He accused Netanyahu of following a policy of “widening the conflict into a conflagration.”

A total of 33,843 Palestinians have been killed in attacks on Gaza since October 2023, the Health Ministry in the besieged enclave said Tuesday as the Israeli onslaught entered day 193.

It has also injured 76,575 Palestinians, it added.

Israel has pounded Gaza since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv said killed less than 1,200 people.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while over 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

The Jewish state is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.​​​​​​​