Syria's President Assad Re-elected for 4th Term

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected with 95.1 percent of the votes cast, the parliamentary speaker announced Thursday.

The two other presidential candidates, former state minister Abdallah Salloum Abdallah and Mahmud Merhi, a member of the so-called "tolerated opposition", received 1.5 percent and 3.3 percent of the vote respectively, according to the official results.

The landslide victory grants Assad another seven-year term in office in the war-torn country.

Assad's government claimed the election showed Syria was still functioning normally despite the decade-old conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven some 11 million people — about half the population — from their homes.

US and European officials have questioned the legitimacy of the ballot, saying it violated UN resolutions seeking to resolve the ongoing conflict in Syria. Those officials have also complained over a lack of international monitoring for the election.