DHAKA: Jordan has begun executing fighters on death row at dawn as part of an "earth-shattering" response to the burning alive of one of its fighter pilots by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Just hours after a video emerged online on Tuesday purporting to show First-Lieutenant Moaz al-Kassasbeh engulfed in flames, a security official said executions would begin at daybreak on Wednesday.

Two Iraqis - Sajida al-Rishawi, a would-be female suicide bomber, and Ziad al-Karbouli - were the first prisoners to be sent to the gallows.

Jordanian security sources had told Al Jazeera's Nisreen el-Shamayleh on Tuesday that Rishawi would be executed in response to Kassasbeh's murder.

"The death sentence will be carried out on a group of jihadists, starting with Rishawi, as well as Iraqi al-Qaeda operative Ziad al-Karbouli and others who attacked Jordan's interests," a official told AFP news agency.

Five other individuals on death row could also be executed.

The convicts had been moved to al-Suwaqa Jail, where executions in Jordan are typically carried out, a family member of one of the convicts told our correspondent on Tuesday.

Source: Al-Jazeera

BDST: 0955 HRS, FEB 04, 2015