Egyptian Nobel prize winner for literature and famed novelist Naguib Mahfouz died Wednesday at an Interior Ministry hospital in Cairo at the age of 95, the official MENA news agency reported.

MENA, however, didn't reveal exactly when Mahfouz died, saying that he suffered ulcer bleeding overnight.

Mahfouz was hospitalized on July 19 at the Police Hospital in the Cairo district of Agouza when he fell and sustained a deep injury in the head that required a few stiches.

He was admitted to the intensive care unit on Aug. 14, suffering breathing problems, a sudden drop in blood pressure and kidney dysfunction.

Although he had improved in the past days, his bleeding continued.

Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988, was the first Arab to win the prize. And his works have been translated into many languages.

The Nobel prize winner, born in December 1911 in Cairo, began writing when he was 17. His first novel was published in 1939 and ten more were written before the Egyptian revolution of July 1952.

The novelist is best known for his Cairo Trilogy, which describes life in the over 1,000-year-old Islamic part of the Egyptian capital.

Mahfouz was the third oldest Nobel laureate in literature of all time, just behind Bertrand Russell, who died in 1970 at 98, and Halldor Laxness, who died in 1998 at 96.

In 1994, Mahfouz was injured by a radical Islamist in an assassination attempt due to his controversial novel "Children of Gebelawi" written in 1959, which conservative Muslims deemed blasphemous.

Before being hospitalized, Mahfouz was said to have been living a punctual life and chiselled his daily routine to perfection.

He wrote at an exact time, ate at an exact time, and even smoked at an exact time. Any change in his routine troubled him deeply.

Source: Xinhua