Saudi authorities staged the "worst cover-up ever" in the killing of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Donald Trump has said as the US announced its first punitive action in the case by revoking the visas of some of the senior Saudi officials involved.

Following a global outrage, Riyadh on Friday in a statement acknowledged that Khashoggi was killed in a fistfight inside the consulate after an interrogation went wrong. Trump offered his most stinging indictment yet of a Saudi effort to silence a dissident journalist, calling the series of events that led to Khashoggi's death "the worst cover up ever."