Riyadh:
Saudi Arabia on Monday beheaded one of its citizens accused of killing his wife, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
Abdullah Adawi suffocated his wife Rihab Harithi, also a Saudi, as she slept, the ministry said. He was executed in Jizan, in the kingdom's south.
His beheading brings the total number of executions in the ultra-conservative kingdom to 24 so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official reports.
Under the AFP count, at least 76 people were beheaded in 2011 in Saudi Arabia, while rights group Amnesty International put the number of executions last year at 79.
The death penalty in Saudi Arabia applies to a wide range of offences including rape, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking, as well as murder, as stipulated by Islamic Sharia law.