Giving the official results from Thursday's presidential poll in the north African country, the minister told a packed press conference that Ali Benflis, Bouteflika's former right-hand man who was seen as his top challenger, garnered 7.93 percent.

Benflis immediately rejected the results, telling AFP that North Korean strongman Kim Il Sung "couldn't have done better."

"I do not recognize these election based on rampant fraud," he said.

Car horns could be heard blaring in the streets of Algiers soon after the announcement, as they had Thursday night in anticipation of a massive Bouteflika victory, in the absence of even partial results.

As Bouteflika supporters let off firecrackers, Benflis denounced alleged "fraud that has begun to work" as he and fellow candidates Abdallah Djaballah and Siad Sadi had said they feared ahead of the vote.

On Thursday the three issued a joint communique saying that according to their projections no candidate had won more than 50 percent of the vote, and a second-round run-off would be needed.

The Bouteflika campaign swiftly dismissed the rival candidates' claim, saying that they wanted to "disobey the popular will" and courted "grave dangers for the entire nation."

Zerhouni announced Friday that Djaballah, a radical Islamist candidate, had come in third with 4.84 percent, while Siad Sadi, head of the Rally for Culture and Democracy, scored 1.93 percent.

Trailing in the dust were Trotskyite Louisa Hanoune -- the first woman to stand for president in Algeria or anywhere in the Arab world -- with 1.16 percent and nationalist Ali Fawzi Rebaine with 0.64 percent.

Some 10.5 million people of the 18-million-strong electorate cast ballots in the election, for a turnout of 59.26 percent, Zerhouni said.

The election marked a series of democratic firsts here, notably that the military, the traditional powerbroker in Algerian politics, pledged neutrality this time, and that candidates' representatives were given vote tallies at the polling stations.

The vote came against the backdrop of an acrimonious duel between Bouteflika and Benflis, the government chief he sacked last year, causing a split in the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) and forcing the president to stand as an independent with Benflis bearing the FLN standard.

Benflis, the FLN secretary general, and Bouteflika, who was elected five years ago in an empty contest after all six of his rivals pulled out alleging fraud, were widely considered twin front-runners in the vote.

Mohammed Benchicou, publisher of the respected newspaper Le Matin and an outspoken critic of Bouteflika, was outraged by the overnight celebrations of the president's presumed victory.

"What victory?" he thundered. "We are experiencing an outrageous fraud. It's impossible that Bouteflika won with 70 percent," Benchicou told AFP, citing the figure that was claimed Thursday night. "It will be the first time a dictator is democratically elected."

Some 120 international observers from the European Parliament, the Organization of Security Cooperation in Europe, the Arab League, the United Nations and the African Union were present for the vote, another first for Algeria.

Pasqualina Neapoletano, who headed a five-member observer team from the European Parliament, told reporters here Tuesday that if one candidate won in a landslide, "that will mean that something's wrong."

Enrique Olmos, the European Union's top representative in Algiers, said the parliamentary observer mission would issue a statement following the official announcement of the results.

TERRA.WIRE