AZERBIJAN: At least two people died and dozens were hurt in clashes between Azerbaijan's riot police and protesters yesterday, when violence followed a controversial presidential election that ushered in the former Soviet Union's first political dynasty.
Azeri television said a 51- year-old man died and a truck killed a child, in street fighting sparked by Mr Ilham Aliyev's landslide victory in a vote to find a successor for his ailing father, ruler of oil-rich Azerbaijan for a decade.
Western election observers were fiercely critical of the poll, which gave Mr Aliyev 79.5 per cent of the vote, with Mr Isa Gambar a distant second with 12.1 per cent.
"The country deserved a better election than this one," said Mr Peter Eicher, head of the mission from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. "This election was a missed opportunity for a genuinely democratic election process."
He cited violence against opposition activists, biased media coverage, ballot stuffing and falsified vote counts as features of the election.
Russia ignored the complaints, and President Vladimir Putin was one of the first to congratulate Mr Aliyev on his win.
"This convincing election shows that the people of Azerbaijan support your balanced programme for developing the country and its foreign policy course," the Kremlin quoted Mr Putin as saying in a telegram to playboy-turned politician Mr Aliyev.
Thousands of supporters of Mr Gambar and other Aliyev opponents flooded the streets of the capital Baku just moments after the OSCE condemned the poll.
Russia's NTV television showed black-glad police beating protesters, including women and elderly men, with truncheons. Many bloodied people lay motionless on the ground as police and Interior Ministry troops marched forward, pounding their riot shields with heavy batons.
Reinforcements were sent in to support police after stick-wielding demonstrators smashed up cars and broke windows around Baku's main square.
Opposition supporters were enraged at the result of the vote, and at an alleged attack on their headquarters on Wednesday night by masked Azeri police.
There was no immediate comment on the vote or the violence from Mr Aliyev (41), whom many people fear is not experienced enough to succeed his father, a former Azeri Communist Party and KGB chief who was a member of Nikita Krushchev's Soviet politburo.
Mr Aliyev snr (80) made his son prime minister after going into a US hospital in July for heart and kidney treatment.