Poll results prompt Iran protests (Al Jazeera)

Protesters battled police and started fires, but their actions appeared not to be co-ordinated [Reuters] Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Tehran to protest the outcome of the country's elections, the biggest unrest since the country's 1979 revolution. Riot police were deployed in the capital after supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated reformist candidate, took to the streets on Saturday. Up to 3,000 Mousavi supporters took part in the protests after Mousavi was defeated by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president. Protests intensified following a televised speech by Ahmadinejad in which he said the vote had been "completely free" and the outcome was "a great victory" for Iran. "Today, the people of Iran have inspired other nations and disappointed their ill-wishers," he said. "This is a great victory at a time when the ... propaganda facilities outside Iran and sometimes inside Iran were totally mobilized against our people," he said. He praised the country's youth, but made no direct mention of the protests. 'Running battles' Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili, reporting from Tehran, said major streets in the north of the capital had come to a standstill. "Coming up the street there were running battles happening between riot police and students and there were refuse bins alight in the middle of the road," he said. "I saw riot police hitting student's with sticks. I saw students - or young people - throwing stones at the riot police, trying to knock them off their motorcycles. "But you didn't get a sense that there was any kind of organised movement in this." Mohsen Khancharli, Tehran's deputy police chief, said the force would "strongly confront" any gathering or rally held without permission. "Police are not confronting people but only those who are disturbing public order or who make damage to public places," he told Iran's official IRNA news agency. Fearing the protests might spread, authorities blocked access to some news websites and Facebook, the social networking site. "Text messaging has been closed all day and now its very difficult to even get a mobile telephone line," our correspondent said. 'Provocative behaviour' Ahmadinejad won a landslid victory in the polls on Friday, with figures from the interior ministry showing he had taken 62.63 per cent of the vote, with Mousavi garnering only 33.75 per cent. The scale of Ahmadinejad's triumph upset widespread expectations that Mousavi might win the race. But supporters of Ahmadinejad also took to the street following the annocunement of his victory, waving Iranian flags and honking car horns in celebration of his winning a second, four-year term. At least three people were injured in the clashes between police and Mousavi's supporters. Mousavi said members of his election headquarters had been beaten "with batons, wooden sticks and electrical rods". he appealed directly to Khamenei to intervene and stop what he said were violations of the law. But Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran's supreme leader, appeared unlikely to intervene. He told the defeated candidates and their supporters to avoid "provocative behaviour". In a statement read on state television, Khameini said: "The chosen and respected president is the president of all the Iranian nation and everyone, including yesterday's competitors, must unanimously support and help him."