SHAH ALAM - Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has described the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi as "terrible cruelty" in the first remarks on the issue by a top Malaysian government official.

"This is a form of terrible cruelty, where to us it is unacceptable.

"We all have people we do not like, but we cannot be going around and killing them if we don't like them," he said, as quoted by Malay Mail online news on Monday (Oct 22).

Tun Mahathir was responding to a question posed to him at a public forum in Shah Alah, capital of Selangor state. The forum was organised by Malay daily Sinar Harian this afternoon.

Mr Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, was an outspoken journalist who once had close ties to the Saudi royal family.

Turkish intelligence sources have leaked information that strongly implicates Saudi Arabian government figures in the murder.

Said Dr Mahathir, as quoted by the news site: "There were people in the past who also didn't like me.

"Thankfully, in our country we don't have this sort of cruelty, and we don't support such actions as killing someone who is a critic of the government."