A top Iran­ian of­fi­cial pledged his coun­try’s un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for Lebanon af­ter talks Fri­day with Lebanese lead­ers on the on­go­ing war be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah, which came as the Unit­ed States con­tin­ued ac­tive­ly push­ing both sides to agree to a new cease-fire deal.

Ali Lar­i­jani, an ad­vis­er to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, said he hoped cir­cum­stances would soon im­prove in Lebanon so that dis­placed peo­ple could re­turn home.

“The main aim of our vis­it is to loud­ly say that we will stand by Lebanon’s gov­ern­ment and peo­ple,” Lar­i­jani told re­porters af­ter sep­a­rate meet­ings with Par­lia­ment Speak­er Nabih Berri and care­tak­er Prime Min­is­ter Na­jib Mikati.

The U.S. has been try­ing to bro­ker an end to the fight­ing be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah, which came as the 13-month war with Hamas broad­ened in Sep­tem­ber in­to south­ern and east­ern Lebanon as well as Beirut’s south­ern sub­urbs.

Both Hezbol­lah and Hamas are backed by Iran, and Hezbol­lah be­gan fir­ing rock­ets in­to north­ern Is­rael the day af­ter Hamas’ sur­prise at­tack in­to Is­rael on Oct. 7, 2023 ig­nit­ed the war in Gaza.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports in Lebanese me­dia, U.S. Am­bas­sador Lisa John­son has hand­ed over a draft of a pro­posed deal to end the Is­rael-Hezbol­lah war to Par­lia­ment Speak­er Nabih Berri, who has been lead­ing the talks rep­re­sent­ing Hezbol­lah.

A Lebanese of­fi­cial con­firmed Fri­day that John­son vis­it­ed Berri but re­fused to say whether a draft was hand­ed over.

An­oth­er Lebanese of­fi­cial con­firmed that Beirut has re­ceived a copy of a draft pro­pos­al that the U.S. sees as suit­able to end the Is­rael-Hezbol­lah war based on U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion 1701 that end­ed the war in sum­mer 2006 be­tween Is­rael and Hezbol­lah.

The of­fi­cial did not give de­tails oth­er than to say Is­rael was in­sist­ing that some guar­an­tees be in­clud­ed.

Both spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­rized to speak to the me­dia about the on­go­ing talks.

The U.S. Em­bassy re­fused to ei­ther con­firm or de­ny the re­ports.

Lar­i­jani flew in Fri­day from neigh­bor­ing Syr­ia where he held sim­i­lar talks a day ear­li­er with Pres­i­dent Bashar As­sad. Syr­ia’s state news agency said As­sad and Lar­i­jani dis­cussed the “on­go­ing ag­gres­sion on Pales­tine and Lebanon and the ne­ces­si­ty of stop­ping it.”

In ad­di­tion to sup­port­ing Hamas, Iran is a main backer of Hezbol­lah and for decades has been fund­ing and arm­ing the Lebanese mil­i­tant group.

Asked if he was vis­it­ing to try and thwart U.S. ef­forts to end the Is­rael-Hezbol­lah war, Lar­i­jani said, “We are not try­ing to blow up any ef­fort but we want to solve the prob­lem and we will stand by Lebanon, what­ev­er the cir­cum­stances.”

Lar­i­jani’s vis­it to the Lebanese cap­i­tal was punc­tu­at­ed with a re­newed aer­i­al at­tack by Is­rael on the south­east­ern edge of the city.

An im­age cap­tured by an As­so­ci­at­ed Press pho­tog­ra­ph­er showed what ap­peared to be an 11-sto­ry res­i­den­tial build­ing in the Tay­ouneh area, few kilo­me­ters (miles) from cen­tral Beirut, about to be hit by a bomb, then burst­ing in­to flames.

There were no im­me­di­ate re­ports of ca­su­al­ties but the bomb hit a low­er lev­el of the build­ing, turn­ing much of it to rub­ble. The Is­raeli mil­i­tary had is­sued a warn­ing ahead of the at­tack, claim­ing it was a fa­cil­i­ty that be­longed to Hezbol­lah.

Fu­ner­als were held Fri­day for 11 peo­ple killed Thurs­day in a se­ries of Is­raeli airstrikes in and around the cen­tral Gaza Strip city of Deir al-Bal­ah.

The in­jured and dead were all tak­en to the Al-Aqsa Mar­tyrs Hos­pi­tal where they were seen by an AP re­porter. Two chil­dren were among the dead.

The health min­istry in Hamas-con­trolled Gaza said Fri­day that over­all 28 peo­ple had been killed and 120 in­jured in the past 24 hours.

On Thurs­day, the Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil’s 10 elect­ed mem­bers cir­cu­lat­ed a draft res­o­lu­tion de­mand­ing “an im­me­di­ate, un­con­di­tion­al and per­ma­nent cease-fire” in Gaza as well.

The draft res­o­lu­tion, which was sent to the coun­cil’s five per­ma­nent mem­bers, re­it­er­ates the coun­cil’s de­mand “for the im­me­di­ate and un­con­di­tion­al re­lease of all hostages” seized dur­ing Hamas’ sur­prise at­tacks on south­ern Is­rael. Is­rael says about 100 are still be­ing held, though not all are be­lieved to be alive.

The U.S., Is­rael’s clos­est al­ly, holds the key to whether the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil adopts the res­o­lu­tion. The four oth­er per­ma­nent mem­bers — Rus­sia, Chi­na, Britain and France — are ex­pect­ed to sup­port it or ab­stain.

The draft, ob­tained Thurs­day by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, al­so de­mands im­me­di­ate ac­cess for Gaza’s civil­ian pop­u­la­tion to hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid and ser­vices es­sen­tial for their sur­vival.

The draft res­o­lu­tion would al­so ex­press the coun­cil’s “deep alarm over the on­go­ing cat­a­stroph­ic hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Gaza in­clud­ing the lack of ad­e­quate health­care ser­vices and the state of food in­se­cu­ri­ty cre­at­ing a risk of famine no­tably in the north.”

It would de­plore all at­tacks against civil­ians and “civil­ian ob­jects” and all acts of ter­ror­ism.

The Is­rael-Hamas war be­gan af­ter Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants stormed in­to Is­rael on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 peo­ple — most­ly civil­ians — and ab­duct­ing 250 oth­ers.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary re­sponse in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 peo­ple, Pales­tin­ian health of­fi­cials say. The of­fi­cials do not dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants, but say more than half of those killed have been women and chil­dren.

Hezbol­lah be­gan fir­ing in­to Is­rael on Oct. 8, 2023, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the con­flict erupt­ed, more than 3,200 peo­ple have been killed and more than 14,000 wound­ed in Lebanon, the Health Min­istry re­port­ed.

Lebanon has al­so suf­fered some $8.5 bil­lion in phys­i­cal dam­age and eco­nom­ic loss, ac­cord­ing to a World Bank re­port Thurs­day.

In the town of Douris near the city of Baal­bek in east­ern Lebanon, res­cue teams con­tin­ued search­ing through the rub­ble Fri­day at the site of an Is­raeli strike that hit a civ­il de­fense cen­ter the night be­fore.

The Lebanese Civ­il De­fense said in a state­ment that 13 bod­ies had been re­cov­ered, all of them em­ploy­ees and vol­un­teers of the emer­gency ser­vices agency, as well as some oth­er re­mains that will re­quire DNA test­ing.

The Gen­er­al Di­rec­torate of Civ­il De­fense in a state­ment ex­pressed “deep re­gret over this di­rect at­tack on its mem­bers” and said that its cen­ters “will con­tin­ue to re­spond to re­lief calls and con­tin­ue with its hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sion, no mat­ter how great the chal­lenges and sac­ri­fices are.”

Ris­ing re­port­ed from Bangkok. Ab­by Sewell in Beirut and Edith Led­er­er at the Unit­ed Na­tions con­tributed to this re­port.

BEIRUT (AP) —