ASSISI, Italy -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel lamented Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull his country out of the Iran nuclear accord was making the situation in the Middle East "even more difficult" and warned Europeans to be skeptical of "easy" solutions promised by populists.
Speaking while in Italy to receive a peace prize, Merkel cited the recent escalation of Israeli-Iranian hostility that quickly followed Trump's announcement about the Iran accord as a reason for concern.
"We are following the events between Iran and Israel, bearing in mind that Israel's security" is important to Germany, Merkel said Saturday in comments reported by the Ansa newswire.
The escalation between Israel and Iran has raised fears that the region may be sliding into a direct confrontation between the two archenemies.
A wave of Israeli airstrikes on suspected Iranian military positions in Syria last week killed 42 people, including at least 19 Iranians, a Syria war monitor reported Saturday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll from attacks early Thursday has risen from 23 to 27, including at least 11 Iranians and six Syrian soldiers.
Israel had said its strikes Thursday were in response to a barrage of Iranian rockets on its positions in the occupied Golan Heights, the most serious military confrontation between the two bitter enemies to date. Israel said it hit targets near the capital, in southern and central Syria, focusing on weapons storage, logistics sites and intelligence centers used by elite Iranian forces in Syria.
It also said it destroyed several Syrian air-defense systems after coming under heavy fire and that none of its warplanes were hit.
Syrian state-run media had said Israel struck a military outpost near the capital Damascus late Tuesday, adding that its air defenses intercepted and destroyed two of the incoming missiles. The Observatory said at least 15 people were killed in the strike, eight of them Iranians, including a member of the Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.
Israel had previously warned that Iran has been deploying its allied militias in the area.
Iran says Israel's repeated attacks are based on "fabricated" reasons.
Separately, just days after Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran deal designed to keep Tehran's atomic weapons program in check, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog said its top inspector immediately quit.
The International Atomic Energy Agency didn't give a reason for the sudden resignation of Tero Varjoranta, stating Saturday that it doesn't comment on confidential personnel matters.
Varjoranta, who was in the role for almost five years, will be replaced temporarily by Massimo Aparo, an Italian nuclear engineer who was most recently the agency's top inspector for Iran.
The Vienna-based nuclear agency says it has no indications Iran is in breach of the accord.
In Italy, Merkel made her remarks at St. Francis' Basilica in Assisi, where Franciscan friars awarded her the St. Francis Lamp for peace. Merkel was honored for the welcome Germany gave to Syrian war refugees, a decision that carried political risks for the chancellor and her party.
Addressing conflicts on her own continent, Merkel condemned what she called "nightly violations" in Ukraine of cease-fire agreements reached in 2014 and 2015 to end the conflict between pro-Kiev forces and pro-Russia fighters in the country's battered east.
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"Ukraine is worrying us," she said. "We try to enforce the Minsk agreements, but every night there is a violation of the truce, every day human losses. The Ukrainians are not alone."
Delivering a speech about challenges to a more peaceful world, the chancellor also cautioned against Europeans seeking easy solutions to their problems from populist politicians, whose clout has been on the rise across much of the continent.
"The harder the problem is, and the easier the solution is claimed to be, the more suspicious and critical everyone ... should be," Merkel said.
Merkel underlined Germany's "good cooperation" with Italy but declined to share her views on its current struggle to form a government. That country "is going through a demanding political phase on which I will not express myself," she was quoted as saying.
Even as she spoke, two Italian populist leaders, from the euroskeptic 5-Star Movement and the anti-migrant League, were meeting in Milan to hammer out a deal for a coalition government.
Merkel stressed the importance of countering populist statements with facts and of speaking out when people make sweeping claims about entire sections of society.
"I think we should try to do two things at once: be European, but also regard our home countries as part of our identity. They don't have to be opposites," she said.
Merkel said Europe needs to remember and strengthen its values if it wants to protect its own peace and security. "If we don't ... know how to give Europe a soul, we will lose this game," she said, quoting former European Commission President Romano Prodi.
Introducing her at the ceremony was Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos, who won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for dogged efforts to bring 50 years of violent conflict in his country to a peaceful end.
Santos praised Merkel for representing "those principles which ought to serve as antidotes in a world in which the ghosts of nationalism, of fundamentalism, of racism, of populism and of intolerance are surging with dangerous vigor."
For her part, Merkel warned of the damage national stereotypes can pose for European understanding.
She recalled how during the eurozone crisis of the past decade, Greeks were branded as lazy in German media.
"There are lazy Germans [too,]" Merkel said. "As soon as we fall into stereotypes, we destroy Europe."
Speaking about refugees coming from Africa, a hot-button political issue that has fueled nationalism in Italy and Germany, Merkel said, "if we want to create peace, we must not only think about our own well-being. Together with our neighbors, we must search for a solution."
Addressing the divisions around the issue of migrants to Europe, Merkel said "tolerance must be always present in the European Union."
She cited her own Christian faith, hailing St. Francis as "perhaps the most famous saint."
Francis, she noted, "broke the taboo of society. He embraced society's poor, which was then forbidden."
Information for this article was contributed by Frances D'Emilio, Patricia Thomas, Frank Jordans and other staff members of The Associated Press; and by Ross Larsen of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 05/13/2018