Israel has toned down its criticism of the Vatican, saying that remarks by Pope Francis’ deputy on the killings in Gaza were “regrettable” rather than “deplorable”, Reuters reports.

The embassy said it should have used the word “regrettable”, and that the mix-up was the result of an imprecise translation.

The Israeli embassy said the original English text of its statement had used the word “regrettable” and its staff had translated that into “deplorevole” in the Italian version they released.

“A more precise” Italian translation would have been “sfortunata”, the embassy said, a word which means something more like unfortunate.