Iran announced on Monday the results of the first round of the parliamentary elections, which saw the conservative hard-liners take an unchallengeable lead over their rivals.

Iran's Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said that in the first round of the elections, the vote count of which ended on Monday, 225 out of the 290 seats were filled and the fate of the 65 others will be decided in the run-off contests, which are likely to be held on the last days of April.

According to the latest results released by local media on Monday, loyalists to supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and powerful clerics, dubbed the United Front of Principalists, won the majority of about 75 percent in the first round of the elections.

Mohammad-Najjar said Saturday that the turnout of the elections was more than 64 percent with some 48 million eligible voters.

According to official figures, the turnout in the 2008 parliamentary elections was 55.4 percent.

The minister said Iran's "enemies" invested a lot to discourage people from participating in the elections, but the people disappointed them by the high turnout.

On Friday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei called on the Iranian citizens for a mass turnout in the elections as a means to show their support to their Islamic nation.