Israeli strikes hit Syria's Aleppo airport on Wednesday, a war monitor said, in what was the fourth such incident in two weeks as regional tensions simmer over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

"Israel renewed its air aggressions on Syria... bombing Aleppo International Airport on Wednesday afternoon," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he was cancelling plans to visit Israel because of its "inhumane" war against Hamas militants in Gaza.

"It's about time we talked clearly to those killing women and children," Erdogan said.

The prospect of Israeli forces launching an assault into Gaza's dense urban neighborhoods, where militants use civilians as human shields, brings back searing memories of the deadly battles the U.S.-led coalition fought against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

For U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his military leaders, that intense combat and the thousands of civilians killed in airstrikes and neighborhood gunfights in Mosul and Raqqa are lessons to be shared as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion against Hamas.

Israel has ramped up airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, reducing residential buildings to rubble and crushing families. Airstrikes have killed dozens at a time in leveled homes, according to witnesses.

The surging death toll foretells even greater loss of life ahead in Gaza, where Israeli forces are expected to launch a ground invasion seeking to destroy Hamas. Fuel shortages and the bombardment forced the shutdown of medical facilities, Gaza officials said.

Israeli strikes killed eight soldiers in southern Syria early Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, in what the Israeli army said was a response to earlier rocket fire.

The gas-rich nation of Qatar has become a key intermediary over the fate of some 200 hostages held by Hamas militants after their unprecedented attack on Israel, once again putting the small Arabian Peninsula country in the spotlight.

The negotiations have also thrust Qatar into a delicate international balancing act as it maintains a relationship with those viewed as militant groups by the West while trying to preserve its close security ties with the United States.

An Israeli 85-year-old freed by Palestinian militant group Hamas said Tuesday she "went through hell" during her abduction, but was treated well during more than two weeks held captive in Gaza.

Yocheved Lifshitz was a resident of Nir Oz kibbutz, one of the Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip which Hamas militants attacked on October 7.

Forty years after one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops in the Middle East, some warn that Washington could be sliding toward a new conflict in the region.

On Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber hit an American military barracks at Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. service members, most of them Marines – still the deadliest attack on Marines since the World War II Battle of Iwo Jima. A near-simultaneous attack on French forces killed 58 paratroopers.

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking after meeting Israel's prime minister on Tuesday, proposed a coalition to fight terror groups in the region “that threaten all of us.”

He compared the proposal to the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. He was referring to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran itself and the Houtis in Yemen, among others, saying they must not take the risk of opening a new front.

French President Emmanuel Macron was Tuesday set to become the first Western leader to meet both Israel's premier and the Palestinian president, more than two weeks into the brutal Gaza conflict that has claimed thousands of lives.

As Israel battles Gaza's Hamas after suffering the worst attack in its 75-year history, Macron visited to express solidarity but also to stress the need to protect Gaza's civilian population in the withering bombing campaign since.