Two Saudi women and two Yemeni men were executed by the sword on Wednesday for separate murders, the interior ministry said, bringing the number of executions there to at least 62 this year.

Suad bint Hosni al-Enzi and her sister Muna were convicted of murdering Namsha bint Khozaim al-Enzi after breaking into her house, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

The first woman stabbed the victim to death while the second held her daughter to prevent her from rescuing her mother, the statement said.

Both women were executed in Riyadh.

In the second case, Yemenis Ali bin Hasan bin Naji al-Hamdi and Molatef bin Mohammed bin Naji al-Hamdi were condemned after storming a house near the Red Sea city of Jeddah and killing an Ethiopian guard, the ministry said.

The pair were executed in Jeddah.

On Tuesday, the UN human rights office expressed distress at Saudi Arabia's execution of 10 men, including eight Bangladeshis, and urged the ultra-conservative kingdom to place a moratorium on the death penalty.

The eight Bangladeshis were beheaded on Saturday for stealing goods from a warehouse and leaving its Egyptian guard to die.

On the same day, two Saudis were also beheaded.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under the oil-rich Gulf state's strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.

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