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Russia maintains active contacts with US over MidEast settlement - Deputy Foreign Minister

He added that contacts with the US on the issue would be continued next week, but no concrete details were available at this point

MOSCOW, May 19. /TASS/. Russia maintains contacts at different levels with the United States over the aggravation of tensions between Israel and Palestine and this issue will be high on the agenda of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the media on Wednesday.

"We keep in touch with their special representative for the Middle East settlement Mr. Hady Amr. The contacts are rather intensive. Alongside this, discussions at other levels are in progress. Naturally, this issue is among the main ones at Lavrov’s meeting with Blinken today," Ryabkov said.

He added that contacts with the US on the issue would be continued next week, but no concrete details were available at this point.

Radical Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army have been exchanging bombardments since May 10, following unrest near the Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, triggered by an Israeli court ruling to confiscate homes from several Arab families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. According to the latest statistics available from Palestine’s Health Ministry, 239 have been killed, including 219 in Gaza (60 children and 36 women). There have been no less than 12 fatalities on the Israeli side.

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