ANKARA, April 22 (Reuters) - Turkey is making efforts to revive negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and bring together the leaders of the warring sides, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in a meeting in Ankara, the Turkish presidency said on Wednesday.

Earlier on Wednesday, Kyiv said it had asked Turkey, a NATO member, to host a leaders' level meeting with Russia. Ankara has maintained good ties with both Ukraine and Russia since Moscow's full-scale invasion in 2022.

Palestinian mourners said Wednesday that Israeli settlers descended from a nearby hill and attacked a school in the occupied West Bank, killing two people, including a teenage student.

Aws Hamdi al-Naasan, 14, and Jihad Marzouq Abu Naim, 32, were killed by gunfire on Tuesday in the village of Al-Mughayyir.

"The students were taking their monthly exams. Suddenly, we were shocked to see settlers advancing towards the school and attacking it," principal Bassam Abu Assaf told AFP, as relatives and villagers gathered at the funeral.

April 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. breach of commitments and its blockade of Iranian ports and threats are the main obstacles to "genuine negotiations", Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday.

"[The] world sees your endless hypocritical rhetoric and contradiction between claims and actions," he said, one day after U.S. President Donald Trump's ceasefire extension.

(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din and Ahmed Tolba; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Iranian officials have kept a united front in the Middle East war and there appears for now to be no major split within the leadership, even though factional disagreements exist and the complete absence from public view of key decision makers creates confusion, analysts said.

Announcing an extension of the ceasefire in the war against the Islamic republic, US President Donald Trump said Tuesday the move was partly "based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so".

By David Brunnstrom and Olivia Le Poidevin

April 22 (Reuters) - Former Costa Rican vice president Rebeca Grynspan, a candidate to head the United Nations, vowed on Wednesday that peacemaking would be her first priority if chosen, while warning that trust is waning in the world body and time running out to restore it.

"Peacemaking is the purpose of this organization," Grynspan, one of four candidates vying to become the next U.N. secretary-general from next year, told a hearing on her candidacy at the U.N. in New York.

The United States has vowed to blockade Iran's ships until the country makes a deal to end their war. But is the blockade working?

Analysts and ship-tracking data paint a complicated picture. Shifting objectives and shadowy activity by vessels making the success of the US operation hard to measure.

"There's been confusion over the scope and the parameters of the blockade because of conflicting information given by the US administration and some delays in when information has been released," Bridget Diakun, an analyst at shipping journal Lloyd's List Intelligence, told AFP.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday defended the Trump administration's recent about-face to temporarily extend a sanctions waiver that allowed the sale of Russian oil already at sea.

The month-long relief announced last Friday was meant to cool soaring energy prices. But it came just two days after Bessent told reporters that Washington would not renew the waiver.

The latest move allowed for purchases of oil and petroleum products that had been loaded onto vessels as of Friday, through 12:01 am (0401 GMT) on May 16.

The latest developments in the Middle East war:

- US Central Command turns back 31 vessels -

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said late Wednesday that it had also "directed 31 vessels to turn around or return to port" as part of its own "blockade against Iran".

It said on X "the majority of vessels have complied with US directions" adding that "most vessels turned around have been oil tankers".

- Oil jumps before easing -

Lebanese town official Sharif Badreddine begged his youngest son not to leave to fight for Hezbollah against Israel in the country's south, but as the tearful father buried his child he could not hide a sense of pride.

In the face of a government push to disarm the movement, its supporters call on a long-held enmity with Israel, deep religious beliefs and backing from Iran to justify their sons' sacrifice in the group's latest war that has killed thousands in Lebanon.

"Before he left, I told him, 'Don't go, the situation is bad,'" Badreddine, 67, told AFP.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon during its latest war with Hezbollah damaged or destroyed more than 50,000 housing units in the country, a government estimate found on Wednesday.

"Within about 45 days (of the war), we had 17,756 destroyed housing units and 32,668 damaged housing units," Chadi Abdallah, head of the National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS), told AFP.

Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed more than 2,400 people and displaced more than a million since Iran-backed Hezbollah drew the country into the Middle East war on March 2.