Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel must keep open-ended control of Gaza's border with Egypt, digging in on his stance on an issue that has threatened to derail cease-fire efforts.

Netanyahu's comments came as the United States is developing a new proposal for a cease-fire and hostage release, hoping to break a long deadlock and bring an end to the nearly 11-month-old war.

Palestinian health officials said Israeli strikes in the occupied West Bank killed five people, including the son of a prominent jailed militant.

Israel has been carrying out large-scale raids in the territory over the past week that it says are aimed at dismantling militant groups and preventing attacks. The Palestinians fear a widening of the war in Gaza.

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli strike on a tent camp killed four men and wounded two children.

The strike early Thursday hit an encampment near the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah. Hospital officials confirmed the toll and an Associated Press reporter saw the bodies.

Twelve Syrian soldiers have been killed by an Al-Qaida linked group in northwest Syria, according to a war monitoring organization, the highest such death toll in the region this year.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday that "12 members of the regime forces, including an officer, were killed following suicide attacks carried out by special forces from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS), targeting regime forces positions in the north of Latakia province" adjacent to Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in the northwest.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has set off for a diplomatic tour of the Middle East as efforts continue towards a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the Gaza war.

Pressure has mounted on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a deal to end the fighting, days after Israel's military recovered six killed hostages from a Gaza tunnel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Hamas had rejected all elements of a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza that would help facilitate the release of hostages.

"Hamas has rejected everything... I hope that changes because I want those hostages out," Netanyahu told a news conference on Wednesday, casting doubt on the possibility of a breakthrough one day after the State Department said it was "time to finalize that deal".

A drone attack on a car in Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdish region killed three people on Wednesday, a local official told AFP.

Turkey has maintained dozens of military bases in northern Iraq for the past quarter of a century as part of its campaign against militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Six people were wounded when a roadside blast hit a convoy transporting local officials including the governor in Syria's southern Daraa province on Wednesday, the interior ministry said.

"Six people were lightly wounded" when a roadside "explosive device planted by a terrorist group" went off while the local officials were returning "from a work visit" in the province's east, a ministry statement said.

Salvagers abandoned an initial effort to tow away a burning oil tanker in the Red Sea targeted by Yemen's Houthi rebels as it "was not safe to proceed," a European Union naval mission said, leaving the Sounion stranded and its 1 million barrels of oil at risk of spilling.

While a major spill has yet to occur, the incident threatens to become one of the worst yet in the Iranian-backed rebels' campaign that has disrupted the $1 trillion in goods that pass through the Red Sea each year over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. It also has halted some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on Wednesday is making his first official visit to Turkey since assuming power, after the two regional powers ended years of tensions.

El-Sissi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are set to discuss bilateral relations, the conflict in Gaza and escalating tensions in the Middle East, among other topics. They are also expected to oversee the signing of more than a dozen cooperation agreements to strengthen the relationship between their nations, including in energy, defense and tourism.