Israel has urged Washington not to suspend its annual $1.3 billion in aid to Cairo in the wake of the ouster of Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi by the military, press reports said on Tuesday.

Under U.S. law, all military and economic aid must be suspended to any country where the government is overthrown by the military, although Washington has not yet determined whether it considers the June 30 removal of Morsi was actually a coup -- a claim made by the Muslim Brotherhood, to which the ousted president belongs.

People wounded in fighting between rebels and regime troops in the central Syria city of Homs are dying for lack of medical equipment, a watchdog said on Tuesday.

"The army's continuous bombardment over the past 11 days has made the critical humanitarian situation in rebel areas of Homs even worse," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse.

The United States has spent billions in aid to Egypt, but the education of thousands of officers at elite American academies is equally vital to the close military ties between Washington and Cairo.

As Egypt convulses with deadly political tumult, such calculated, decades-long nurturing of army relations emerges as a key element as Washington engages a vital Mideast ally in the aftermath of the Egyptian military's ouster of president Mohamed Morsi last week.

A second 'Prisoner X' was being held in top-secret conditions in the same jail where an Israeli-Australian spy took his own life in 2010, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Court documents cited by Haaretz newspaper said the prisoner was being held in another wing of Ayalon prison at the same time as Ben Zygier, an alleged Mossad spy whose mysterious arrest and subsequent suicide shocked Israel and Australia when news of it hit the headlines in February.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Monday on all Syrian parties to observe a truce during the holy month of Ramadan.

"I am calling for every military unit of the regular army and the Free Syrian Army, for every person holding a gun, to stop fighting and offer this month of peace as a collective present to their people," Ban said in a statement

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday condemned the latest wave of bloodshed in Egypt, calling for an independent inquiry into fresh violence which left more than 50 people dead.

Fifty-one people, mostly loyalists of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, were killed outside an army barracks in Cairo on Monday.

Egypt's interim leader vowed fresh elections by early next year after 51 people, mostly supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi, were killed outside Cairo military barracks Monday.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, which has led demonstrations against Wednesday's military overthrow of the Islamist leader, called for an "uprising," saying troops and police "massacred" its supporters during dawn prayers in Cairo Monday.

The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan will begin in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, the royal cabinet announced in a statement Monday, citing the kingdom's religious authorities.

The holy month during which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and strive to be more pious and charitable, begins with the sighting of the new moon, which varies from country to country.

The Tunisian presidency said on Monday it would extend by three months the state of emergency in place since the uprising that toppled former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

"The president of the republic Moncef Marzouki decided to extend the state of emergency by three months," the official TAP news agency reported.

The United States on Monday called for "maximum restraint" from Egypt's military and condemned the Muslim Brotherhood's calls for an uprising after some 50 people were shot dead at a demonstration.

The White House also said there would be no immediate cutoff in aid to Egypt following the military's ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected leader.