BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Union's 28 foreign ministers are to hold emergency talks on Wednesday to review the bloc's relations with Egypt, a European Commission spokesman told AFP.

A decision to convene the emergency meeting at around noon in Brussels on Wednesday was agreed by senior diplomats from EU member states who gathered for a preparatory round of talks on Monday on the spiralling bloodshed in Egypt.

Ambassadors on the bloc's Political and Security Committee were called away from their summer break for the talks after the death toll from five days of violence in Egypt climbed to almost 800.

The meetings come amid a mounting international outcry over the violence and warnings from Brussels that the bloc will "urgently review" ties with the country.

"Recent developments in Egypt, and more particularly the violence of the last days, are extremely worrying," the presidents of the European Council and European Commission, Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso, said in a joint statement issued on Sunday.

"It is crucial that violence ends immediately," they added.

"The EU will urgently review in the coming days its relations with Egypt."