Ammon News - Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev was on course for a landslide re-election win, initial results showed on Wednesday, in a vote he called early after recapturing the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia and a crackdown on the media.

According to preliminary results released by the central election commission after just over half of the votes had been counted, Aliyev was way ahead with 92.1% of votes cast.

An earlier exit poll conducted among 63,000 people by Oracle Advisory Group had suggested he would take 93.9% of the vote.

The two main opposition parties are boycotting the poll in the oil and gas producing state. Azeri energy resources are central to European plans to reduce dependency on Russian gas following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar as president in 2003, has typically taken over 85% of the vote in elections that rights groups said were neither free nor fair.

Reuters