Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative, has won a landslide victory in Friday's Iranian presidential run-off, the Interior Ministry announced Saturday.

He has been taking a strong lead over his rival, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, by winning over 60 percent of the counted votes, according to preliminary results.

The Interior Ministry posted a notice in its headquarters, declaring the victory of Ahmadinejad. An aide to Rafsanjani said they admitted defeat.

An official at the Guardian Council, which must approve the election results, said the turnout of the run-off was 26 million, or 56 percent.

The mayor entered the run-off with 19 percent of the vote in the first round on June 17 against 21 percent by Rafsanjani.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has banned supporters of either candidate from holding street victory celebrations, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"It was heard that the headquarters of both candidates are preparing for celebrations and announcement of their victory," Khamenei said in a statement, adding they are strongly instructed that a premature announcement of victory "should be seriously objected to and prevented."

Iran's state media all kept silent on Saturday morning about the latest results, including the state television and radio, which often present the quickest report on issues concerning the country's official announcements.

Ahmadinejad will be Iran's first non-cleric president in 24 years when he takes office in August.

He has been viewed as a representative of the ultra- conservatives of the country and a disciple of Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad was born into a blacksmith family in 1956 in the southeastern countryside of Tehran. He was finally admitted to PhD in transportation engineering in 1997 in Tehran Industry Technology University.

He was elected Tehran mayor in 2003, and got reputation from the merits of improving the traffic condition and stabilizing prices in the sprawling and polluted capital.

Due to his family background, Ahmadinejad always leads a simple life. It is said that he often takes home-made lunch to office and lives in an ordinary flat. As a result, Ahmadinejad is also enthusiastically supported by people of lower social status in the country.

He has said he is against any compromise on the issue of Iran's nuclear program and relations with the United States. Domestically, the Tehran mayor has been making all efforts to restore the fundamentalist Islamic law in the country, which has made him very unpopular among less religious people.

Source: Xinhua