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.

Greta Thunberg and a group of activists were arrested on Wednesday after occupying a University of Copenhagen building to call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, Danish media reported.

Images on daily Ekstrabladet showed the 21-year-old climate activist, wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh shawl draped over her shoulders, being escorted out of a campus building by police.

Large protests continued in Tel Aviv, Israel, for a third consecutive night Tuesday as hundreds took to the streets to call on the government to reach a cease-fire deal that would bring home the remaining hostages held in Gaza.

The protests have come after the Israeli military said six hostages were killed by their captors in Gaza just as troops were closing in on their location. Many Israelis blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the mounting number of dead hostages and are calling for a cease-fire agreement to free the remaining hostages.

The U.S. Justice Department has announced criminal charges against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other senior militants in connection with the Oct. 7, 2023, rampage in Israel, marking the first effort by American law enforcement to formally call out the masterminds of the attack.

The seven-count criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York City includes charges such as conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and conspiracy to finance terrorism. It also accuses Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah of providing financial support, weapons, including rockets, and military supplies to Hamas for use in attacks.

A young Palestinian journalist whose coverage of the widespread destruction and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip went viral now watches the war from afar in Lebanon.

Twenty-two-year-old Plestia Alaqad was just over a year out of university with a journalism degree when she found herself in the middle of a war zone. She donned a blue press helmet and vest to interview families in refugee camps and hospitals, posting the videos to Instagram.