Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was sworn in after the May elections, which the opposition called illegal and false.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won over 95.1% of the vote in this war-torn country and has been sworn in in this war-torn country. This is the fourth seven-year term.

The election on May 26 was described as illegal and false by Assad’s opponents and Western countries.

The inauguration ceremony on Saturday was held at the Presidential Palace in Damascus. More than 600 people including clergy, parliament members, politicians and military officers attended.

In his inauguration speech, 55-year-old Assad said that the election “proved the power of the people’s legitimacy given to the country by the people”.

He added that they “slandered the statements of Western officials on the legitimacy of the country, the constitution, and the motherland.”

Assad took over in 2000 after his father Hafez, who had seized power in a bloodless military coup, died in 1970.

There is no doubt that he was re-elected by an overwhelming advantage. Assad received 95.1% of the vote in the election, and officials said that out of approximately 18 million registered voters, the turnout rate was 78.6%. There are no independent supervisors for one-day voting.

This game is iconic, with two little-known candidates competing with Assad. In the polls before 2014, he won nearly 89% of the votes.

At the beginning of his new term, the country was still being destroyed by a 10-year war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and plunged further into a worsening economic crisis.

Nearly half of Syria’s pre-war population was either displaced or lived as refugees in neighboring countries or Europe. The war has left tens of thousands of people missing and destroyed the country’s infrastructure.

The United Nations estimates that more than 80% of Syrians live below the poverty line. The Syrian currency is in free fall, and basic services and resources have become scarce or provided at excessively high parallel market prices.

The fighting has basically subsided, but parts of Syria are still out of government control, and foreign troops and armed groups are deployed in different parts of the country.

Assad has been in power since 2000 [Syrian Presidency via Facebook via AP]

The conflict that began in 2011 began with the government’s suppression of peaceful protests, turning the opposition that opposed the Assad family’s decades of rule into an armed rebellion.

Assad was subject to expanding sanctions and was isolated by the West, with the support of Iran and Russia, who sent troops and aid to support him in fighting rebel groups.

European and American governments attribute most of the war atrocities to Assad and his assistants. The president called his armed opposition “terrorists,” but the UN-led negotiations to end the conflict have made no progress.

U.S. and European officials questioned the legitimacy of the election, saying it violated the UN resolution to resolve the conflict, lacked any international oversight, and did not represent all Syrians.

Despite the ceasefire agreement reached since last year, a war monitor and rescuer reported that the government shelled a village in the last rebel-controlled enclave in northwestern Syria, killing at least five people, including two girls and them. Grandmother.

The White Helmets or Syrian Civil Defence Organization, a voluntary search and rescue organization operating in areas controlled by the Syrian rebels, said that two volunteers were injured by shelling in Sarja, a village in Idlib province.

Russian and regime forces are still attacking local civilians and rescue teams #Syria And carry out more massacres.So far 5 civilians have been killed and many others have been injured, including two #WhiteHelmets, After aiming #series village #Idlib This morning. pic.twitter.com/T0FVmn7BHv

-White Helmet (@SyriaCivilDef) July 17, 2021

In recent weeks, as government forces strive to restore control of the territory, violence in the enclave has escalated, and the territory has a population of nearly 4 million.

In 2020, Turkey, which supports the Syrian opposition and deploys troops in the region, reached a truce with Russia. At that time, it stopped a Russian-backed government air and ground operation aimed at retaking the area.

UNICEF stated that 512 children were confirmed to have been killed in the fighting in Syria last year, most of them in the northwest, where there are 1.7 million vulnerable children, many of whom have fled the violence many times.