BANGKOK (AP) Myanmars government confirmed Monday it had carried out its first executions in nearly 50 years, hanging a former lawmaker, a democracy activist and two other political prisoners who had been accused of a targeted killing after the countrys military takeover last year.

The executions, first announced in the state-run Mirror Daily newspaper, were carried out despite worldwide pleas for clemency for the four men, including from United Nations experts and Cambodia, which holds the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

There were swift condemnations.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the executions, which mark a further deterioration of the already dire human rights environment in Myanmar, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said, stressing the U.N. chiefs opposition to the death penalty.

The secretary-general reiterates his call for the immediate release of all arbitrarily detained prisoners, including President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Haq said.

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said she was dismayed by this cruel and regressive step. She added: For the military to widen its killing will only deepen its entanglement in the crisis it has itself created.

According to the newspaper, the four were executed in accordance with legal procedures for directing and organizing violent and inhuman accomplice acts of terrorist killings. It did not say when they were hanged.