U.S. top diplomat Antony Blinken will make a surprise visit to Bahrain Wednesday, a State Department official said, the latest leg of a crisis tour of the Middle East.

After meeting Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Blinken will fly to Bahrain, home base of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, for talks with King Hamad on preventing a regional escalation of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Yemen's Houthi rebels fired one of their largest barrage of drones and missiles targeting shipping in the Red Sea, forcing the U.S. and British navies to shoot down the projectiles in a major naval engagement, authorities said Wednesday. No damage was immediately reported.

The attack by the Iranian-backed Houthis came despite of a planned United Nations Security Council vote later Wednesday to potentially condemn and demand an immediate halt to the attacks by the rebels, who say their assaults are aimed at stopping Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday about reforming the Palestinian self-rule government, as part of U.S. efforts to rally the region behind postwar plans for Gaza that also include concrete steps toward a Palestinian state.

Blinken says he has secured commitments from multiple countries in the region to assist with rebuilding and governing Gaza after Israel's war against Hamas, and that wider Israeli-Arab normalization is still possible, but only if there is "a pathway to a Palestinian state."

Palestinian officials accused Israel of a "brutal crime" on Tuesday after footage shared on social media appeared to show a military vehicle running over a dead militant in the occupied West Bank.

The foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, said the footage was from a military operation in the city of Tulkarem.

An Islamic State group attack killed at least 14 soldiers aboard a military bus in the Syrian desert on Tuesday, a war monitor said.

"At least 14 members of the regime forces were killed" and several others wounded "in a bloody IS attack on a military bus," in the desert near the ancient city of Palmyra, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh called on Muslim states on Tuesday to provide Palestinian militants with weapons, as the group's war with Israel rages in the Gaza Strip.

"We see countries of the world pouring weapons into the occupation (Israel)... The time has come (for Muslim states) to support the resistance with weapons, because this is... not the battle of the Palestinian people alone," Haniyeh said in a speech in Doha, according to a transcript shared by the group with journalists.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that four key Arab nations and Turkey have agreed to begin planning for the reconstruction and governance of Gaza once Israel's war against Hamas ends.

Blinken, who is on an urgent Mideast mission aimed primarily at preventing the conflict from spreading as fears rise of a regional war, said Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey would consider participating in and contributing to "day after" scenarios for the Palestinian territory, which has been devastated by three months of deadly Israeli bombardment.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held talks in Israel on Tuesday as he seeks a plan for Gaza's post-war future, while Israel's military pushed ahead with its offensive in the beleaguered territory. Heavy bombardment and fighting shook refugee camps, sending Palestinians scrambling to find safety and hampering aid groups' efforts to get relief to the population.

Blinken arrived in Israel after saying he had secured commitments from four Arab nations and Turkey to help in rebuilding Gaza after the war, something they'd been reluctant to promise before a stop in fighting.

Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken was set to meet Israeli leaders Tuesday as part of efforts to contain the war in Gaza, a day after strikes in Syria and Lebanon killed high-profile members of Hamas and its ally Hezbollah.

The visit comes as the Israeli military said its campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip was shifting into a new phase involving more targeted operations in the territory's centre and south.

Medics, patients and displaced people are fleeing from the main hospital in central Gaza as the fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants draws closer, witnesses said Monday. Losing the facility would be another major blow to a health system shattered by three months of war.

Doctors Without Borders and other aid groups withdrew from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in recent days, saying it is too dangerous. That spread panic among people sheltering there, causing many to join the hundreds of thousands who have fled to the south of the besieged territory.