The Canadian foreign ministry has said the country has decided to pull the children of its diplomats and their guardians out of Israel amid fears of a widened conflict in the Middle East, Reuters reports.

The foreign ministry said it had approved temporarily relocating the diplomats’ children and their guardians to a safe third country. It added that diplomats stationed in Ramallah in the West Bank and in Beirut do not have dependents living with them.

The embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut and the representative office to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank “all remain fully operational and continue to provide essential services to Canadians”, the ministry said in a statement.