The BBC reports:
Thousands of angry protesters have clashed with police after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's presidential poll.
Secret police have been attacked, while riot police used batons and tear gas against backers of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who called the results a "charade".
Correspondents say the violence is the worst seen in Tehran in a decade.
In a televised address to the nation, Mr Ahmadinejad thanked voters for giving him a "great victory".
Mr Mousavi, a former prime minister, dismissed the election result as deeply flawed.
"I personally strongly protest the many obvious violations and I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade," the Reuters news agency reported him as saying.
Mr Mousavi had said there was a shortage of ballot papers and alleged that millions of people had been denied the right to vote.
His election monitors were not allowed enough access to polling stations, he added.
The head of the Committee to Protect the People's Votes, a group set up by all three opposition candidates, said the group would not accept the result, alleging fraud.
They have asked Iran's Guardian Council - a powerful body controlled by conservative clerics - to cancel the results and re-run the elections. A second opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, declared the results "illegitimate and unacceptable".
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says the result has been greeted with surprise and with deep scepticism by many Iranians.
The figures, if they are to be believed, show Mr Ahmadinejad winning strongly ... even in the heartland of Mr Mousavi.
The scale of Mr Ahmadinejad's win means that many people who voted for a reformist candidate in the previous presidential election four years ago have apparently switched their votes to Mr Ahmadinejad, he adds.
However, the president does enjoy the support of many of the urban poor and rural dwellers.
"I am happy that my candidate has won - he helps the poor and he catches the thieves," sandwich seller Kamra Mohammadi, 22, told the AFP news agency.
Mr Mousavi gains much of his support from the middle classes and the educated urban population.
BBC Iranian affairs analyst Sadeq Saba says the result means that hope for peaceful reform in Iran may die for a long time.
There had been a surge of interest in Iran's presidential election, with unprecedented live television debates between the candidates and rallies attended by thousands.
My opinion:
I do not condone violence of any sort, but if Hitler had not been stopped, Europe would now be under Nazi rule. Imagine that!
The Iranians are now fighting for much needed reform. This will not happen while Ahmadinejad rules.
If the American people had stood up to the decision of the Supreme Court in 2000, Al Gore would have taken his rightful place as President of the United States and hundreds of thousands of lives would not have been lost in Iraq.
Instead, there were no real protests when George W. Bush was placed in the seat of power ... and the rest, as they say, is history.
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