As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel's relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don't take them in.

The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.

Israeli emergency cabinet minister Benny Gantz has said that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war is likely to take months, and could potentially include a northern front as well.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will host Jordan's King Abdullah II for a summit in Cairo on Thursday, the presidency said, as violence in the neighboring Gaza Strip spirals.

The Jordanian royal court said in a statement that the two leaders would "discuss means to stop the Israeli aggression on Gaza".

Coalition forces were slightly injured in Iraq in a spate of drone attacks over the last 24 hours at U.S. bases in Iraq as regional tensions flare following the deadly explosion at a hospital in Gaza.

Two drones targeted the al Asad airbase in western Iraq used by U.S. forces and one drone targeted a base in northern Iraq, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. U.S. forces intercepted all three, destroying two but only damaging the third, which led to minor injuries among coalition forces at the western base, according to a statement Wednesday by U.S. Central Command.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has agreed to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza to allow a first batch of around 20 humanitarian aid trucks through, U.S. President Joe Biden said.

"He agreed to... let up to 20 trucks through to begin with," Biden told reporters after calling Sisi from Air Force One while returning from a visit to Israel, where he was showing solidarity over the October 7 Hamas attacks.

The Israeli government struck a Syrian military position in the war-torn country's south, a war monitoring NGO said.

"Sounds of explosions rang out in the province of Quneitra after an Israeli strike against a Syrian army position," said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a vast network of sources in the country.

Two suicide drones launched at a base hosting U.S. troops in Iraq were intercepted Wednesday, a defense official said.

Hours later, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq announced it had launched another drone attack on a second base. No injuries were reported in either incident.

Doctors in Gaza City faced with dwindling medical supplies performed surgery on hospital floors, often without anesthesia, in a desperate bid to save badly wounded victims of a massive blast that killed civilians sheltering in a nearby hospital amid Israeli bombings and a blockade of the territory.

At least 500 people were killed, the Health Ministry said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday said his country rejects what he calls efforts to force Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, warning that such an effort would jeopardize his country’s peace with Israel.

Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, al-Sisi said Wednesday that his government views Israel’s siege on Gaza, including cutting off water, food and fuel and preventing humanitarian aid from flowing into the territory as a scheme to expel the Palestinians to Egypt.

Jordan canceled a planned summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah II because it "would not be able to stop the war now," Jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs said.

Ayman Al-Safadi said in a statement on Wednesday that “Jordan will continue to work with everyone so that when this summit is held, it will be able to achieve what is required of it, which is to stop the war, deliver humanitarian support to the people of Gaza, and put an end to this crisis.”