Qatar plans to order 118 Leopard tanks from Germany over the next seven years, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper said Sunday, citing sources close to the Qatari government.

The paper said the tanks will be manufactured by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall.

A major fire caused "irreversible" damage on Wednesday to a landmark 17th-century Paris mansion, the Hotel Lambert, as it was undergoing controversial renovations by the Qatari royal family.

Murals, frescoes and paintings dating back hundreds of years were completely destroyed by the blaze which broke out around 1:30am (2330 GMT Tuesday).

Qatar, a key supporter of Islamists who rose to power in Arab Spring countries, is losing ground in regional politics to Saudi Arabia which appears to have seized the reins on key issues, notably Egypt and Syria.

The decline in Qatar's regional diplomacy comes as its powerful emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani unexpectedly abdicated in favor of his son Tamim last month.

Gas-rich Qatar, a key backer of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Egypt's Mohammed Morsi belongs, condemned the killing of 42 loyalists of the ousted president on Monday, and called on all Egyptians to abandon violence.

The Muslim Brotherhood, which has led demonstrations against last Wednesday's overthrow of Morsi, said its supporters were "massacred" when police and troops fired on them during dawn prayers outside an elite army headquarters in Cairo.

The top U.S. military commander on Sunday urged a cautious approach as the United States reaches out to the Taliban to try to help launch reconciliation talks in Afghanistan.

"It is always difficult to think about the losses that we've suffered and the idea that at some point we would find reconciliation with the Taliban," General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told CNN.

A Qatari man has died in a British hospital from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus which has been causing increasing alarm among world health experts, officials said Thursday.

The death brings to 43 the number of people to date who have died from the SARS-like infection, which has an extremely high mortality rate.

Qatar, a key political and financial backer of Egypt's deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, congratulated his successor on Thursday while pro-government newspapers warned of possible future violence in the country.

"Qatar will continue to back Egypt in its leading role in the Arab and Muslim worlds," a foreign ministry spokesman said in remarks carried by the official QNA news agency.

Qatar's former prime minister and strongman was on Tuesday replaced as deputy head of the powerful Qatar Investment Authority in a shakeup ordered by the country's new young emir, official QNA news agency reported.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani had already lost his post as foreign and prime minister when the new emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani announced his cabinet on June 26.

The West should have negotiated with the Taliban more than a decade ago, soon after they were toppled, Britain's senior general in Afghanistan said on Saturday after recent efforts to start peace talks collapsed in ignominy.

General Nick Carter told the London-based Guardian newspaper that an opportunity to bring peace to Afghanistan was missed when the Taliban were on the defensive in 2002 after they were ousted following the 9/11 attacks.

Qatar's new emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said his country seeks ties with "all governments" and will not take sides, in a conciliatory speech Wednesday which steered clear of the Syrian conflict.

In his first address to the nation since assuming power, Tamim said his country "rejects divisions in Arab societies on sectarian lines," in reference to Sunni-Shiite tensions convulsing the region.