By Timour Azhari, Ariba Shahid and Tuvan Gumrukcu

RIYADH/KARACHI/ANKARA, Aug 7 - Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed a joint defence agreement in Mecca on Friday, wedding Sunni Muslim U.S. allies alarmed at a regional conflagration that has brought Iranian missile fire onto Gulf oil exporters.

Iran and its allies have been firing on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and blockading their energy shipments, since the U.S. and Israel attacked it on February 28 in a major escalation after years of regional tumult.

Aug 7 (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met Saudi general intelligence chief Khalid al-Humaidan on Friday to discuss coordination over regional security developments, the prime minister's office said.

Zaidi said Iraq would not allow its territory to be used to launch attacks or activities targeting any other country. He reiterated Baghdad's commitment to protecting its sovereignty and preventing regional escalation.

WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Progress is being made between Iran and Oman on the Strait of Hormuz and "we expect a deal soon," a U.S. official told Reuters on Friday.

Once a deal is announced to restore commercial shipping without impediments, the United States will lift its blockade of Iranian ports, the official said.

"There is progress between Oman and Iran on the Strait, and we expect a deal soon," the official said. "Once the deal is announced to restore commercial shipping without impediments, the United States will lift the blockade of Iranian ports."

By Maya Gebeily

BEIRUT, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Lebanon and Israel have agreed a shortlist of countries that could send troops to verify the disarmament of Hezbollah under a U.S.-brokered agreement, a Lebanese official said on Friday, with the United States due to pick countries from the list.

The official declined to identify any of the countries on the shortlist or say how many there were. Another Lebanese official and two foreign diplomats have previously told Reuters that Israel and the United States had vetoed France.

By Yamaam Al-Shaar and Firas Makdesi

Aug 6 (Reuters) - A bomb planted in a minibus wounded 14 people on the outskirts of Syria's capital Damascus on Thursday night, with some of the injuries so severe that they were taken for fatalities, an official said on Friday.

Officials had said on Thursday that two people were killed in the blast. Health ministry head of media, Riad al-Sayed Hasan, told Reuters that assessment was based on the discovery of body parts at the scene which turned out to be those of some of the people severely wounded.

Perched on the edge of a rooftop high above Gaza City's bombed-out landscape, Ibrahim al-Dabba lovingly tends his community of bees, cultivating a rare source of hope among the ruins of the Israel-Hamas war.

Al-Dabba and his sons, donning protective netted hats and wielding metal bee smokers, gently inspect the neat rows of teeming hives.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a joint defence agreement on Friday amid violence in the region from Houthi attacks and the US-Iran war.

Riyadh is looking to strengthen its security ties against the backdrop of war between the United States and Iran, which has drawn in surrounding nations and disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

The war has emboldened Iran and its Houthi allies in Yemen, both of which have attacked Saudi Arabia, while analysts say Washington is now seen as an increasingly unreliable partner.

By Timour Azhari

RIYADH, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia expects imminent coordinated attacks from Iraqi militias north of the Gulf state and from Yemen's Houthis from the south under the supervision of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a senior Saudi official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said late on Thursday that intelligence reports from Saudi Arabia, the United States and other regional countries indicated civilian and economic sites could be targeted, including energy infrastructure, ports and airports.

By Emily Rose

BEIT EL, West Bank, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich faces a fight for political survival in elections in October after angering his fellow West Bank settlers by voting not to punish ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to serve in the military.

The political travails of Smotrich are a sign of how tricky it will be for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to shepherd allies in his quarrelsome coalition through the October 27 election, Israel's first since the start of the Gaza war.

SINGAPORE, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has dwindled to 33 vessels from Monday to Thursday this week, data showed, versus 50 in the week-ago period, as markets watched talks between Iran and Oman for signs of progress in reopening the key waterway.

Four vessels transited the strait on Thursday, including a very large crude carrier, Nissos Kea, carrying about 2 million barrels of Basrah crude loaded in Iraq, Kpler data showed.

Of the rest, two were laden with liquefied petroleum gas and one was a minor bulk carrier.