Many Saudi government websites were briefly hacked by a group that gave warning earlier that it would attack the sites, reports said.

The hacking of 24 sites were carried out over a period of two hours by a group named "Cyber of Emotion", an Al Jazeera report said citing Al Riyadh newspaper.

The sites mainly served provincial establishments. Visitors were directed to a page that read: "We do not want to harm the site. Had it been hacked by enemies, your personal information, emails and registration data would have been compromised."

On Twitter, the hackers said their team had already warned the administrators of the websites that the sites were not properly secured and that they should do something about it.

All the websites appeared to be working properly a few hours after the attack, said the Al Jazeera report.