Former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi has urged senior Iranian clerics to speak out against Iran's "rigged" election. He warned that polling violations would lead to tyranny.

Thousands of Mousavi supporters clashed with police in the aftermath of Iran's election. They staged a sit-in at Tehran's Vanak Square. Protestors set fires and threw rocks at police. Cell phone service was cut off in the capital.

Iranian election officials said on Saturday that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election by a clear majority, getting twice as many votes as his closest challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi.

With almost all the votes counted, the Islamic Republic's election commission said Ahmadinejad had won more than 63 percent of votes against 34.7 percent for Mousavi. It put the voter turnout at around 80 percent of 46 million eligible voters.

Voting deadlines were extended several times on Friday to cope with long lines. Analysts had expected the vote to be a tight race between the hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the reformist Mousavi.

Ahmadinejad, seeking his second term in office, won most of his votes from the rural heartland.

Main challenger alleges voting irregularities

Mousavi in a written statement on his website appealed to clerics and branded the work of electoral officials and state television as a "charade."

"What we have seen from dishonest officials will result in shaking the pillars of the Islamic republic system, and a dominace of lying and tyranny," said the satement.

Earlier, at a press conference, Mousavi said many people had not been able to vote and that there had been a lack of ballot papers.

He also accused the authorities of blocking text messaging, which his campaign has used to reach young, urban voters.

Reactions from abroad

In Canada, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said he was "deeply concerned" about reports of voting irregularities in the election.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington said she hoped that the results reflected the "genuine will and desire" of the people.

Ahmadinejad assumed power four years ago on a pledge to revive the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution. He quickly drew international condemnation after refusing to halt Iran's nuclear programme, rejecting Western charges that it was aimed at building an atomic bomb. He also denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped from the map.

nrt/dpa/Reuters/AFP
Editor: Andreas Illmer