IS claims to have executed Jordanian pilot

The Islamic State (IS) Tuesday claimed in an online video to have burnt alive Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, who was captured by the Sunni radical group after his plane crashed in Syria in December last year, media reports said.

The video, which could not immediately be verified, shows a man standing in a cage and engulfed in flames, BBC reported, adding that Jordanian state TV said he was killed a month ago.

The video was distributed via a Twitter account, the report said.

The images published on IS's official al Furqan media site apparently showed the Jordanian pilot being burned alive while confined in a cage, said a CNN report.

Jordanian officials had earlier said they were ready for possibly swapping Sajida al-Rishawi, a female suicide bomber imprisoned in Jordan for her role in a 2005 bombing, for Kasasbeh. That demand was made via Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, who was also taken captive by IS and beheaded in a similar gruesome manner.

An IS video released last week said Goto had "only 24 hours left to live" and Kasasbeh "even less".