A British ship to house hundreds of US troops building a jetty to boost aid deliveries to Gaza has set sail from Cyprus, a UK defence source said Saturday.

Royal Navy support ship Cardigan Bay will assist the international effort to construct the temporary floating pier, which is set to be completed early next month, the Pentagon said.

The pier will initially facilitate the delivery of 90 truckloads of international aid a day into Gaza, rising to up to 150 truckloads once fully operational, according to US estimates.

Between six and eight Palestinian athletes are expected to compete at the Paris Olympics, with some set to be invited by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) even if they fail to qualify, its head Thomas Bach said.

Bach told AFP on Friday that qualification events for the Paris Games, which start on July 26, were ongoing for a number of sports.

Hamas said Saturday it was studying Israel's latest counterproposal for a Gaza ceasefire, a day after media reports said a delegation from mediator Egypt was in Israel trying to jump-start stalled negotiations.

The armed wing of Hamas also released video footage of two men held hostage in Gaza, identified by Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum as Keith Siegel and Omri Miran.

A UN probe into Israeli allegations that 19 members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks has closed one case due to the absence of any evidence from Israel and suspended four others, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday.

UNRWA was swept into controversy in January when Israel accused 12 of its 30,000 employees of being involved in the shocking cross-border attack, which led to the deaths of around 1,160 people -- mostly civilians -- according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.

Israel's war against Hamas has sparked anger and division around the world, including on US campuses, where some Jewish students feel targeted and abused while others have taken leading roles in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

"A lot of people feel really unsafe," says Eli Sanchez, a Jewish 20-year-old economics major at the University of California, Los Angeles, as pro-Palestinian protests upend college life.

A rare meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his US counterpart Joe Biden at the White House has been postponed, a Turkish official said Friday, amid tensions over the Gaza war.

The talks, previously scheduled for May 9, would be the first White House meeting between the two leaders, who last met on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lithuania in July.

"The visit planned for May 9 was postponed because of a change in Erdogan's programme," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A young woman was stabbed and her attacker killed near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Friday, while the country's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was injured in a car crash as he returned from addressing journalists at the scene, officials said.

The young woman was stabbed in the city of Ramla and taken to hospital, police and paramedics said. They said the attacker was killed, without giving details.

Armed groups in the Middle East and North Africa have little difficulty getting their hands on portable surface-to-air missiles despite a campaign to prevent their proliferation, according to a report published Friday.

Shoulder-fired missiles -- also known as man-portable air-defence systems, or MANPADS -- in the hands of militants are seen as a threat because of their ability to target military aircraft, but also passenger planes.

A delegation from mediator Egypt arrived in Israel Friday in a bid to reignite stalled negotiations for a ceasefire in the Gaza war including the potential release of hostages, Israeli and Egyptian media reported.

The signs of fresh truce talks came alongside Israeli preparations for a military push in Gaza's southern city of Rafah, and with spillover from the war leading to stepped-up exchanges of fire over Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

Syria has avoided getting embroiled in the Gaza war, experts said, despite a strike on Iran's Damascus consulate, blamed on Israel, that threatened to ignite a regional conflagration.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is seeking to strike a delicate balancing act between Russia and Iran, which have propped up it up during 13 years of civil war and helped it reclaim lost territory.