Pope Francis said on Thursday he was praying for the victims of the violence in Egypt that has left more than 500 people dead and appealed for "peace, dialogue and reconciliation".

"About the very sad news that has come unfortunately from Egypt: I wish to address my prayers to the victims, their families, the wounded and to those who are suffering," the pontiff said during a blessing at Castel Gandolfo, the summer papal residence near Rome.

Saudi Arabia on Thursday beheaded a citizen convicted of torturing his wife to death, in the first execution since the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, state media said.

Fawzi al-Khaibari had been found guilty of beating up and burning his wife with an iron before "crushing her skull" and leaving her to die, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Russia's foreign ministry on Thursday urged tourists to avoid trips to Egypt because of raging violence that has claimed more than 400 lives and spread to provinces outside the capital Cairo.

"Clashes and unrest that began in the capital are quickly spreading to other cities and regions of Egypt, including those favoured by tourists," ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement.

An Israeli organisation said on Thursday that it has secretly flown 17 Yemeni Jews to Israel after evacuating them from the Arabian Peninsula country.

A direct flight from Yemen brought four adults and one child to Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv on Wednesday, said Arielle Di Porto, a spokeswoman for the Jewish Agency responsible for Jewish immigration to Israel.

Egyptian authorities have closed the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip "indefinitely" for security reasons after a day of deadly violence nationwide, a security official told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

Hundreds of Palestinian travelers were left stranded on both sides of the crossing, the only gateway into the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory that bypasses Israel, witnesses said.

French President Francois Hollande has summoned the Egyptian ambassador to France for a meeting on Thursday, sources at the presidency said, a day after a bloody crackdown on supporters of the country's ousted Islamist president.

Wednesday's violence, which came as security forces stormed the protest camps of supporters of Mohammed Morsi, has left at least 370 dead across Egypt, according to official estimates.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have separately voiced support for a deadly assault by Egypt's security forces on Islamist supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi, saying it was the state's duty to restore order.

The Emirati foreign ministry affirmed in a late Wednesday statement its "understanding of the sovereign measures taken by the Egyptian government after it had practiced maximum self-restraint during the preceding period."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday called for an urgent U.N. Security Council meeting over Egypt's bloody crackdown on supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, which has left hundreds dead.

"The Security Council of the United Nations should convene quickly to discuss the situation in Egypt," Erdogan told reporters in Ankara.

A wave of car bombs in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday killed 26 people and wounded dozens, the latest attacks in a months-long surge in violence.

Attacks have been on the rise in Iraq since a deadly security crackdown in April on a Sunni protest camp. More than 3,000 people have been killed in violence during the past few months, raising fears Iraq could see a new round of widespread sectarian bloodshed similar to that which brought the country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007.

The United Nations said Wednesday the departure of a team of chemical weapons inspectors to Syria was "imminent" following a green light from Damascus.

"The Government of Syria has formally accepted the modalities essential for cooperation to ensure the proper, safe and efficient conduct of the mission," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman said in a statement.