US aviation giant Boeing on Thursday signed a contract worth billions of dollars to sell 12 787 Dreamliners, with options for six more, to Gulf Air, as the Bahrain-based carrier looks to expand its global network.

The order comes one month after an Air India Boeing 787 crashed shortly after takeoff, killing a total of 260 people on the plane and on the ground.

"Once finalized, this order will bring the carrier's firm order book to 14 of the versatile wide-body jets and will support 30,000 jobs across the US," the companies said in a joint statement.

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) -France, Britain and Germany told Iran on Thursday that they wanted Tehran to resume diplomacy immediately over its nuclear programme and warned if there were no concrete steps by the end of the summer they would restore U.N. sanctions.

The foreign ministers of the so-called E3, along with the European Union's foreign policy chief, held their first call with Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi since Israel and the United States carried out air strikes in mid-June on Iran's nuclear programme.

(Reuters) -Leaders of ethnically split Cyprus have agreed to continue discussions towards confidence building, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday, in a dispute which has kept NATO partners Greece and Turkey at odds for decades.

The Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities will press ahead with attempts to open new crossing points between the two sides and cooperating on solar energy initiatives, Guterres said after hosting the Cypriot leaders at U.N. headquarters in New York.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. presented Israel and Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas with an updated Gaza ceasefire proposal on Wednesday, Axios reported on Thursday, citing two sources.

The two main updates in the latest proposal had to do with the scope of the Israeli military's withdrawal from Gaza during a ceasefire and the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released for each Israeli hostage, Axios reported.

By Steve Holland and Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -\U.S. President Donald Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a deadly Israeli strike on Gaza's sole Catholic Church, the White House said on Thursday, adding Trump did not react positively to the incident.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

An Israeli strike on Gaza's sole Catholic Church killed three people and injured several others, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which oversees the small parish, said on Thursday.

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States did not support recent Israeli strikes on Syria, the State Department said on Thursday, adding that Washington made clear its displeasure after tensions escalated and worked quickly to stop it.

On Wednesday, Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, while also hitting government forces in the south, demanding they withdraw and saying Israel aimed to protect Syrian Druze - part of a small but influential minority that also has followers in Lebanon and Israel.

(Reuters) -A Russian crew member of a Greek cargo ship sunk by Houthi militants is undergoing treatment in Yemen, Russia's state RIA news agency said on Thursday, quoting a source.

RIA identified the Russian mariner as Aleksei Galaktionov, one of several crew members picked up by the Yemeni navy after the ship was sunk. It quoted a highly placed source as saying the man, who had suffered wounds in the attack, was now in a markedly improved condition.

BEIRUT (Reuters) -One elderly man had been shot in the head in his living room. Another in his bedroom. The body of a woman lay in the street. After days of bloodshed in Syria's Druze city of Sweida, survivors emerged on Thursday to collect and bury the scores of dead found across the city.

A ceasefire overnight brought an end to ferocious fighting between Druze militia and government forces sent to the city to quell clashes between Druze and Bedouin fighters.

"We mothers of soldiers haven't slept in two years," said Ayelet-Hashakhar Saidof, a lawyer who founded the Mothers on the Front movement in Israel.

A 48-year-old mother of three, including a soldier currently serving in the army, Saidof said her movement brings together some 70,000 mothers of active-duty troops, conscripts and reservists to demand, among other things, a halt to the fighting in Gaza.

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA (Reuters) -Israel has demanded the U.N. Human Rights Council scrap a commission investigating rights violations in the Palestinian territories and Israel, accusing the body of bias, in a letter seen by Reuters.

In the message sent on Wednesday, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Daniel Meron, said The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, discriminated against his country.