Vatican City - Israel's ambassador to the Vatican on Thursday denied that "out of line" remarks by a top Holy See official on the Gaza conflict threaten ties with the Jewish state.

Relations are "as good as before" the ANSA news agency quoted Ambassador Mordechai Lewy as saying.

He was referring to Wednesday's newspaper interview in which Cardinal Renato Marino's described Gaza as a "concentration camp".

Israel's foreign ministry subsequently accused the cleric, who heads the Vatican's justice department, of using the propaganda language of the militant Islamic Hamas.

Israel says its military offensive in the Gaza Strip is aimed at Hamas which controls the enclave and has used it to launch rocket attacks against Israeli targets.

But Martino in another interview published Thursday, said he stood by his comments, and pointed to scores of Palestinian civilians, especially children, killed in the conflict which began on December 27.

Martino "clearly has never been in a concentration camp," Lewy said, in an apparent reference to the Nazi World War II death camps used by the Nazis to kill Jews.

But the Israeli ambassador also said that because the cardinal was not responsible for the Holy See's diplomacy, his remarks had not damaged ties with Israel.

Lewy spoke to ANSA shortly after he and other envoys from the 177 nations who have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, met Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday morning.

In his speech to the diplomats, Benedict lamented "a renewed outbreak of violence provoking immense damage and suffering for the civilian population" in Gaza and Israel and urged "the rejection of hatred, acts of provocation and the use of arms."

"Violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned," Benedict said.

Comments made by church officials before the Gaza crisis began, suggested the pontiff would visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories later this year, but the Vatican has not specified a date. (dpa)