Riyadh: Saudi Arabia executed two citizens convicted of murder on Wednesday, raising to 81 the number of death sentences carried out in the ultra-conservative kingdom this year.
Dhafer and Hussein al-Mutliq were found guilty of killing fellow Saudis Azeb and Mahdi al-Moamer in a dispute between the two families, the interior ministry said.
They were both executed in Najran, in the south, a ministry statement carried by the official SPA news agency said.
Most people put to death in Saudi Arabia are beheaded with a sword. The executions so far this year include 47 for "terrorism" carried out in a single day on January 2.
In 2015, Saudi Arabia executed 153 people, most of them for drug trafficking or murder. Human rights group Amnesty International says the number of executions in Saudi Arabia last year was the highest for two decades.
The kingdom is one of the world's top executioners, although its tally in 2015 was far behind those of China and Iran. Saudi Arabia has a strict Islamic legal code under which murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape and apostasy are all punishable by death.
