Saudi officials behead maid for toddler murder

Riyadh - Saudi authorities beheaded on Monday a Nepali housemaid convicted of murdering a two-year-old boy by slitting his throat, the interior ministry said.

The house maid was found guilty of "slaughtering with a knife" the Saudi toddler Osama bin Maeed al-Enzi, the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

The ministry provided no details about the crime.

The maid's execution in the northern city of Arar brings to 16 the number of death sentences carried out this year in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia beheaded 78 people in 2013, according to an AFP count.

Last year, the UN High Commission for Human Rights denounced a "sharp increase in the use of capital punishment" there since 2011.

According to figures from rights group Amnesty International, the number of executions rose from 27 in 2010, including five, to 82 in 2011, including 28 foreigners.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict version of Islamic sharia law.