Pope Leo the sixteenth on Sunday has called for an end to the “spiral of violence” in the Middle East, after the United States and Israel began an attack on Iran that prompted retaliatory strikes.

The head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics also called for an “urgent return to dialogue” between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which have clashed in recent days.

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend said that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was dead, after Israel and the United States launched an attack of unprecedented scale against the country.

The strikes prompted Tehran to fire off a missile barrage that sent people running for cover in cities across the Middle East.

Iranian authorities urged residents to evacuate the capital, a city of 10 million, while the country’s Red Crescent society said that at least 201 people had been killed in the strikes and more than 700 wounded.

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