Tehran - A huge swath of downtown Tehran erupted in fiery chaos today as helmeted security forces and pro-government militias armed with tear gas and water cannons battled stone-throwing protesters defying warnings from the country's supreme leader against further demonstrations over a disputed presidential election.

    Fierce clashes pitting protesters against security forces and militiamen broke out when cordons of police attempted to block a rally from forming by beating demonstrators and pushing them into waiting police vans.

    At one point, anti-riot police shot into the air after they roughed up a young woman and attracted the ire of protesters. A middle-aged man could be seen staggering along the sidewalk near Tehran University with blood dripping from his face.

    Protesters formed into rock-throwing crowds that fought running battles with militiamen in camouflage uniforms for control of streets and intersections, witnesses said.

    By nighttime, witnesses said, the unrest stretched from the side streets along Enghelab Street all the way from Azadi (Freedom) Street to Vali Asr Street, a miles-long corridor that is among the city's most important east-west thoroughfares. There were reports that disturbances had also broken out in other parts of the city, especially key squares in the north Tehran, but they could not be immediately confirmed.

    The semiofficial Fars News Agency and other news outlets reported that one person was killed and two were injured when a bomb exploded near a shrine to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, on the outskirts of Tehran. The report could not be verified.

    Meanwhile, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's reformist challenger, released a letter detailing alleged offenses that took place before and after the election and demanded an annulment of the vote.

    "The social consciousness and spirit of the Iranian nation will not believe this injustice and breach of the law in its historical memory," he said.

    Reuters quoted an unidentified witness as saying that Mousavi had urged his supporters to stage a nationwide strike if he was arrested.

    In downtown Tehran, contingents of baton-wielding police lined the protest route, and Tehran deputy police chief Ahmad Reza Radan announced that "as of today, no form of illegal gathering to protest against the election results should take place," according to state television. He also warned that anyone who directed protesters to gather in the streets would be liable to arrest.

    Security forces said they had acted with restraint but would soon crack down harder.

    "We have behaved leniently over the past few days. I think that we should restore the law more vigorously," said Brig. Gen. Ahmad Moqqadam, a ranking police official, according to state television. "People are tired. They want to run their business. People want to come to the streets, to travel, to fly somewhere, to go to hospital, but they are stuck in traffic for hours and their rights are denied. This process is boring, disturbing and unbearable."

    Shopkeepers along the protest route were asked to close their stores before the scheduled start of the march. By early afternoon, anti-riot police and soldiers could be seen massing along the route. Protesters started quietly assembling along sidewalks, walking adjacent to the black and camouflaged uniformed security forces, who yelled at them and ordered them to move along, witnesses said.

    As security forces and helmeted Basiji militiamen sometimes pushed the protesters onto the side streets, clashes erupted with protesters hurling showers of rocks at the militiamen, who fired back tear gas, witnesses said.

    "Death to the dictator!" the protesters shouted. Many chanted slogans against the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has sided explicitly with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was declared the winner in the June 12 election.

    Today's attempts to rally came one day after Khamenei demanded that protesters end their mass demonstrations and suggested that those who defied him would be responsible for the consequences.

    Khamenei, who is Iran's highest spiritual and political leader, rejected charges that Ahmadinejad used fraud to win reelection last week.

    "The way of the law is open," Khamenei told tens of thousands of worshipers who gathered in downtown Tehran for Friday prayers and countless others who listened on television and radio. "If people continue to take the other way, I will come back and speak more directly.... If they do not end it, then the consequences lie with them.

    "Nothing can be changed. The presidential campaign is finished," he declared.

    At the sermon's end, Khamenei began lamenting his physical condition and weeping, a gesture that signaled his displeasure and moved the throngs of dignitaries and Basiji militiamen gathered before him to weep in response. Observers said Khamenei's gesture, similar to one he made during the height of 1999 student protests, was a call for loyalists to crack down on the demonstrators as a way of righting a wrong done to their patron.

    But the opposition was unbowed, and called on its supporters to return to the streets today, though it appears neither Mousavi nor other reformist politicians showed up.

    Analysts were not surprised by Khamenei's tone, which defined further civil disobedience as a direct challenge to the Islamic Republic and its supreme leader, who under the constitution is held to be God's representative on Earth.

    In his sermon, Khamenei criticized some of Ahmadinejad's conduct before the June 12 vote, and he condemned the killing of students by pro-government loyalists this week. But he came down explicitly on the side of the hard-line incumbent. He described Ahmadinejad as hardworking, and said the president's views were closer to his than those of other politicians were.

    Khamenei and Ahmadinejad draw support from the same sources, including Basiji militiamen and the Revolutionary Guard.

    "He cannot afford to sacrifice Ahmadinejad," said an analyst in Tehran, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Over the last years Khamenei has teamed up with the Revolutionary Guard to build his power. For Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard, Ahmadinejad is the best alternative."

    Mousavi has become the head of a diverse movement that is pulling him forward as much as he's leading it. Reformists and moderates said they feared the movement would peter out without his leadership.

    State television is reporting that there will be a partial recount of votes from the election. "Although the Guardian Council is not legally obliged ... we are ready to recount 10% of the [ballot] boxes randomly in the presence of representatives of the three [defeated] candidates," a council spokesman said.

    As the clock struck 10 p.m. today, parts of the city roared with chants of "God is great" and "Death to the dictator," as a nightly ritual of protest continued.

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    Mostaghim is a special correspondent. Times staff writer in Cairo contributed to this report.

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