CILACAP: Indonesia executed four people convicted of drug crimes on Friday despite international protests and said it would decide later when as many as 10 others are put to death, including a Pakistani and an Indian.

One Indonesian and three Nigerians were executed by firing squad not long after midnight local time as torrential rains hit the Nusa Kambangan prison island where the death row inmates were held.

The government had said earlier in the week that 14 people on death row, mostly foreigners, would be executed for drug crimes.

Relatives, rights groups and foreign governments had urged Indonesia to spare all 14 lives but it was unclear whether that had any influence on the decision to not carry out all the executions at once. Lawyers and rights groups had raised serious doubts about the legitimacy of the conviction of Jefferson, who had been in prison for more than a decade, as well as the convictions of an Indonesian woman Merri Utami and a Pakistani man Zulfikar Ali.

The latest executions did not attract the same level of media attention abroad but the European Union, U.N. Human Rights Office, Australian government and others continued to speak out against Indonesia's use of the death penalty.