BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi authorities executed 13 men by hanging after they were convicted of murder and kidnapping, lining them up in hoods and green jumpsuits with their hands bound behind their backs.In a rare move that came amid chaotic violence sweeping the capital, the Iraqi government recorded and distributed graphic television footage of the convicts in the moments before they were put to death yesterday. The footage was given to both Iraqi and foreign media.

The images showed two men standing together on a gallows with nooses around their necks. Several of them stooped, and one had his arm around the shoulder of another as the hooded men stood in a row shortly before they were hanged.

The footage also showed a bearded man without a hood as he listened to an official tell him his appeal had been rejected and the sentence was death. “OK,” the prisoner said impassively.

Iraqi TV has rarely aired such pictures since Saddam Hussein’s 2003 ouster. Even under Saddam, executions were common but rarely made public.

Iraq hanged three people convicted of killing police officers on September 1, 2005 in the first executions since Saddam’s ouster. In March of this year, Iraqi authorities executed convicted insurgents for the first time, hanging 13 of them. There may have been other executions in the same time period, but they have not been publicised.

US military officials who oversee the Iraqi justice system said they keep records of the number of Iraqis who have been executed since September 2005. But they could not immediately provide those figures.

The government executed the men after an appeals court and the presidency approved the verdict, said Busho Ibrahim, undersecretary of the Justice Ministry.

“They included terrorists and other criminals convicted of abduction and murder as well as assassination plots in several provinces,” he said.

After the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, American officials deemed the Iraqi court system incapable of rendering a fair decision, and banned the death penalty. Iraqi authorities reinstated the death penalty after the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 so they would have the option of executing Saddam for crimes committed by his regime. The government had also pointed specifically to the need to quell the insurgency when it reinstated the death penalty.

The former Iraqi president was convicted last month of crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang. His lawyers have appealed the verdict and sentence, and an appeals court is expected to rule early next year.

Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, gunmen in military uniforms robbed government accountants as they left a bank with bags of cash. It was the second major robbery in Baghdad in eight days.

Assailants in four vehicles drove up to the Zuwiyah Bank in the Karradah neighbourhood and fired automatic weapons in the air, then handcuffed guards and robbed accountants of 1 billion Iraqi dinars ($709,000), police said.

On December 11, gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms stole $1 million from a bank truck.

Iraq has seen other spectacular bank robberies in recent years. Shortly before the United States began bombing Baghdad in 2003, roughly $900 million in US currency was taken from the central bank — a sum that amounted to about a quarter of Iraq’s hard currency reserves.

Some news reports said Saddam Hussein ordered the money taken and sent his son Qusai to grab the cash in the middle of the night. The take was so large it reportedly had to be hauled away in three tractor trailers.

Hours after the accountants were robbed yesterday, guards at another downtown bank fired on a funeral procession, wounding a mourner. Police said the guards thought the coffin was fake, and that criminals were masquerading as mourners as part of an elaborate robbery attempt. Police intervened and found the mourners to be genuine.

Also Tuesday, the US military announced the death of a Marine in the insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, bringing to 61 the number of American military personnel killed in December. Some 2,950 US troops have been killed since the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ayham al-Samaraie, a former electricity minister who escaped from police custody inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, remained at large. Al-Samaraie, a dual US-Iraqi citizen who was being held on corruption charges, walked out of a police station Sunday with the help of private guards, officials said.

His escape left “more question marks,” said Ali al-Shabout, spokesman for the Public Integrity Commission, which brought charges against al-Samaraie. “Why did the police only inform us after 12 hours?”

Al-Samaraie is the only Iraqi official to have been convicted and jailed on corruption charges, although arrest warrants have been issued for about 90 former officials, including 15 ex-Cabinet ministers, according to the anti-corruption commission. His conviction was thrown out on appeal, but he faced a dozen other charges.