A bombing on a bridge in northern Iraq on Wednesday killed six soldiers and wounded 10 others, security and medical officials said.

The blast went off as a military patrol was crossing the bridge in Ain al-Jahsh, south of the restive city of Mosul.

The German government on Wednesday said it had no reason to believe an attack by gunmen on two German diplomats in Saudi Arabia this week was politically motivated.

The two envoys escaped unharmed when their car came under fire Monday in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, where most of the country's Shiite Muslim minority lives.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and some 40 other world leaders will gather at the World Economic Forum next week to discuss Syria's bloody civil war and the sluggish world economy.

The annual gathering of the global political, business, academic and civil society elite at the swank Swiss ski resort Davos will aim to provide "a mirror of the world as it is", WEF chairman Klaus Schwab told reporters.

Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas urged militants Wednesday to leave the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus in order to save residents from ongoing bloodshed.

"We urgently call all those carrying weapons in Yarmuk to leave the camp in order to save the lives of more than 50,000 civilians," a statement said.

Thousands of African women and children seeking asylum in Israel staged a protest march in Tel Aviv Wednesday against the Jewish state's immigration policies, an Agence France Presse correspondent said.

"We are refugees," women chanted, many of them carrying infants or pushing prams along the streets of this coastal city where most of them live.

U.S. State Secretary John Kerry said he hopes Egypt's constitutional referendum, in which voting ends Wednesday, will be a "transparent and accountable" process.

If there is strong support for the new charter, that may launch a presidential bid by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July.

Israel's defense minister may have apologized for his offensive comments about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry but his outburst could see him marginalized by Washington, commentators warned on Wednesday.

A furious diplomatic row erupted between Israel and its closest ally on Tuesday when Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was quoted as saying Kerry had an "obsession" about the peace process and was working out of a "sense of messianism."

U.S. State Secretary John Kerry on Wednesday downplayed the impact of offensive comments by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon against him, saying he will not allow the slur to affect peace efforts.

A diplomatic row erupted between Israel and Washington on Tuesday after Yaalon was quoted as saying Kerry had an "obsession" and a "sense of messianism" about the peace process.

Around 245,000 Syrians are living in towns and cities under siege and facing extreme hardships, including food shortages, U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos said in Kuwait on Wednesday.

She was speaking at a donor conference aimed at raising $6.5 billion (4.8 billion euros) for Syrians affected by the country's conflict, which has killed more than 130,000 people since March 2011.

Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the north of the country on Wednesday killed a jihadist leader in the town of Saraqeb, a watchdog said.

Meanwhile in jihadist-held Raqa, further east, ISIL set free dozens of rebels it had captured in battles over the past few days, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.