King Juan Carlos of Spain began a visit to the Persian Gulf region on Monday by telling United Arab Emirates officials that deepening ties with their oil-rich country was a top priority, highlighting the role wealthy Arab states could play in shoring up the battered Spanish economy.

The Spanish head of state made the comments at the start of an economic forum in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi, his first stop on a tour of six Gulf nations planned in the next few months. He was accompanied by a high-level delegation that includes several Spanish government ministers and representatives of major Spanish companies.

An Emirati woman attacked in her London hotel in a suspected burglary last weekend lost an eye and has been left with only five percent of her brain function, police said Saturday.

The woman and her two sisters, all from the United Arab Emirates, were brutally attacked with a hammer in their room at the four-star Cumberland Hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning.

A man was charged with attempted murder on Friday over a hammer attack on three wealthy female Emirati tourists in their luxury London hotel room, police said.

The attack happened at in the early hours of Sunday in a room on the seventh floor of the four-star Cumberland Hotel, next to Hyde Park and the main Oxford Street shopping thoroughfare.

The United Arab Emirates announced Friday that one of six Filipino paramedics in the UAE who have been infected by the MERS coronavirus has died from the respiratory disease.

The announcement comes just days after a 24-hour shutdown of the emergency department at a major hospital in Saudi Arabia, where most cases have been reported, amid fears of a spread of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome among medical staff.

Three women from the United Arab Emirates were in hospital on Monday after being savagely attacked in their room at a luxury London hotel by a man wielding a hammer, police said.

The women, all in their 30s, sustained serious injuries to their heads and faces during the "unusually violent attack" at the four-star Cumberland Hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning.

A top Dubai security official, General Dahi Khalfan, has claimed Qatar as forming part of the United Arab Emirates, adding a new dimension to a dispute with Doha.

"Qatar is an integral part of the UAE," the outspoken Khalfan, a longtime critic of the Doha-backed Muslim Brotherhood, wrote on Twitter on Monday, demanding his country "reclaim" Qatar.

An Arab League summit opens in Kuwait on Tuesday at a time of deepening rifts between its member states and without any end in sight to the Syrian conflict.

With Doha in the eye of the storm, the region's leaders are expected to discuss the row which has pitted Qatar against Gulf partners Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as Egypt.

Tunisian premier Mehdi Jomaa arrived in the United Arab Emirates Saturday to start a tour of five oil-rich Gulf monarchies, where he hopes to boost ties and attract investors.

Jomaa heads a government of independents formed in January after the ruling Islamist-dominated coalition left power, and is tasked with turning around Tunisia's faltering economy.

The United Arab Emirates summoned Iraq's ambassador on Wednesday to protest accusations by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Saudi Arabia was supporting terrorism, state media reported.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash handed ambassador Mowafak Mahdi Abboud a memorandum protesting Maliki's "claims that Saudi Arabia supports terrorism," the official WAM news agency said.

Egyptian military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi arrived Tuesday in the United Arab Emirates, a strong supporter of his July ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, the WAM news agency reported.

Field Marshal Sisi, who is Egypt's defense minister and deputy premier, traveled to the UAE to attend the closure of joint military exercises there. He was met by UAE deputy army chief Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.