The kingdom also said some of those executed were members of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and backers of Yemen's Houthi rebels. A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Iran-backed Houthis since 2015 in neighbouring Yemen in an effort to restore the internationally recognised government to power.
Those executed included 73 Saudis, seven Yemenis and one Syrian. The report did not say where the executions took place.
"The accused were provided with the right to an attorney and were guaranteed their full rights under Saudi law during the judicial process, which found them guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead," the Saudi Press Agency said.
"The kingdom will continue to take a strict and unwavering stance against terrorism and extremist ideologies that threaten the stability of the world," the report added. It did not say how the prisoners were executed, though death-row inmates typically are beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
An announcement by Saudi state television described those executed as having "followed the footsteps of Satan" in carrying out their crimes.
The executions drew immediate international criticism.
"The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow," said Soraya Bauwens, the deputy director of Reprieve, a London-based advocacy group.
Ali Adubusi, the director of the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, alleged that some of those executed had been tortured and faced trials "carried out in secret."
"These executions are the opposite of justice," he said.
The kingdom's last mass execution came in January 2016, when the kingdom executed 47 people, including a prominent opposition Shiite cleric who had rallied demonstrations in the kingdom.
In 2019, the kingdom beheaded 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. It also publicly nailed the severed body and head of a convicted extremist to a pole as a warning to others. Such crucifixions after execution, while rare, do occur in the kingdom.
Activists, including Ali al-Ahmed of the US-based Institute for Gulf Affairs, and the group Democracy for the Arab World Now, said they believe that more than three dozen of those executed were Shiites. The Saudi statement, however, did not identify the faiths of those killed.
Shiites, who live primarily in the kingdom's oil-rich east, have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens. Executions of Shiites in the past have stirred regional unrest. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, remains engaged in diplomatic talks with its Shiite regional rival Iran to try to ease years-long tensions.
The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque remains a crucial moment in the history of Saudi Arabia.
A band of ultra-conservative Saudi Sunni militants took the Grand Mosque, home to the cube-shaped Kaaba that Muslims pray toward five times a day, demanding the Al Saud royal family abdicate. A two-week siege that followed ended with an official death toll of 229 killed. The kingdom's rulers soon further embraced Wahhabism, an ultraconservative Islamic doctrine.
Since taking power, Crown Prince Mohammed under his father has increasingly liberalised life in the kingdom, opening movie theatres, allowing women to drive and weakening the country's once-feared religious police.
However, US intelligence agencies believe the crown prince also ordered the slayiing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, while overseeing air strikes in Yemen that killed hundreds of civilians.
In excerpts of an interview with The Atlantic magazine, the crown prince discussed the death penalty, saying a "high percentage" of executions had been halted through the payment of so-called "blood money" settlements to grieving families.
"About the death penalty, we got rid of all of it, except for one category, and this one is written in the Quran. We cannot do anything about it, even if we wished to do something, because it is clear teaching in the Quran," the prince said, according to a transcript later published by the Saudi-owned satellite news channel Al-Arabiya.
"If someone killed someone, another person, the family of that person, has the right, after going to the court, to apply capital punishment, unless they forgive him. Or if someone threatens the life of many people, that means he has to be punished by the death penalty."
He added: "Regardless if I like it or not, I don't have the power to change it."
