The Israeli army announced an increased presence in the West Bank and near Gaza Wednesday evening, as U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial peace plan sparked outrage among Palestinians.

China accused the United States and Britain of "total hypocrisy" Wednesday during a feisty United Nations Security Council meeting about the humanitarian situation in Syria.

The crew of a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker were rescued when the vessel caught fire off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, authorities said Wednesday.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lambasted a Middle East plan unveiled by US counterpart Donald Trump as "absolutely unacceptable" in comments published Wednesday.

President Donald Trump has boasted that his Middle East plan will find support but most experts believe its unabashed backing of Israel and tough conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state mean it is doomed to fail.

Qatar responded cautiously Wednesday to US President Donald Trump's Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, saying it welcomed efforts to broker "longstanding peace" but warned that was unattainable without concessions to the Palestinians.

The plan grants Israel much of what it has sought in decades of international diplomacy, namely control over Jerusalem as its "undivided" capital, rather than a city to share with the Palestinians. The plan also lets Israel annex West Bank settlements.

France on Wednesday insisted on a "two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a day after US President Donald Trump unveiled a Middle East peace plan Paris said it would "carefully study". 

Syria government forces recaptured the strategic highway town of Maaret al-Numan from jihadist and allied rebels on Wednesday, the army said, returning for the first time in seven years.

US President Donald Trump's Middle East plan on Tuesday prompted a lukewarm response from Europe and the UN, and a furious rebuke from key Muslim countries who denounced it as betrayal of the Palestinians.

Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas immediately rejected the U.S.' Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal Tuesday, after President Donald Trump said Jerusalem would remain Israel's "undivided capital."