China said it believed Iran will be able to "handle the situation well and spare the region further turmoil" while safeguarding its sovereignty and dignity.

It was referring to an attack on Iran's embassy in Syria and its retaliatory strike over the weekend.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said to his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a phone call that China appreciated Iran's emphasis on not targeting regional and neighbouring countries, according to the official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

Wang also said he noted Iran had described its actions as limited and carried out in self-defence. China strongly condemns and resolutely opposed the embassy attack, and calls the incident "unacceptable", Wang said.

After briefing Wang on Iran's position, Amir-Abdollahian told Wang that Iran is aware of the regional tensions, is willing to exercise restraint and has no intention of further escalations.

Tensions are high in the Middle East as Israeli military has pledged response to Iran's attack, and several countries called for restraint. Since the Saturday night missile attack, numerous countries have summoned the Iranian ambassadors.

Wang also spoke with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister the same day, Xinhua said, stating that China is willing to work with Riyadh to avoid further escalation in the Middle East.

Foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said that Saudi Arabia "highly expects" China to play an active and important role in that regard, and that his country is willing to strengthen communication and coordination with China to promote an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.

Since the war in Gaza began in October, clashes have erupted between Israel and Iran-aligned groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

Faisal said Saudi Arabia "fully trusts" China, and is willing to push for the sustainable development of bilateral cooperation, according to Xinhua.

At least 34 people, including two babies were killed when a contraband fuel depot exploded into flames in southern Benin near the border with Nigeria on Saturday.

According to Beninese Interior Minister Alassane Seidou, “a serious fire occurred in the town of Seme Podji. Another 20 people were seriously wounded in the incident.”

"I can't really give you the cause of the fire, but there is a large gasoline warehouse here and cars, tricycles and motorcycles come from morning to evening,” he added.

Nigeria is a main oil and gas producer where fuel smuggling is very common along its borders, particularly when the government maintains a subsidy to keep fuel prices low.

The majority of the victims were burnt and they could not be not be identified.

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).