DHAKA: Saudi Arabia has an average of three cases of divorce every hour, official figures indicate.

The total divorce cases recorded in 2012 were more than 30,000, an average of 82 a day and 3.4 an hour, according to a study published in local daily Al Eqtisadiya on Monday, reports gulfnews.com.

The figure was slightly higher than in 2011 when 29,800 couples filed for divorce and in 2010 with its 27,200 divorce cases, an average of 75 cases a day and 3.1 an hour.

The report, based on data released by the justice ministry, said that 90 percent of the divorces occurred between Saudi husbands and Saudi wives.

Divorces among couples were neither of the spouses was a Saudi national constituted seven percent of the total figures with 2,174 cases.

The figure among couples in which the husband was a Saudi citizen and the wife non-Saudi was two percent with 575 cases while the number of divorce cases between Saudi wives and non-Saudi husbands was 207, or one percent of the total number.

According to the study, the figures showed an average of 2.5 divorce cases for every 1,000 men aged above 15.

The total number of males who were more than 15 years old in the kingdom in 2012 was 12 million.

BDST: 1724 HRS, OCT 21, 2013
RoR/JCK