Syria

Bashar al-Assad has won Syria's presidential election by a landslide, according to officials.

Assad has gained 88.7% of support in the first vote with multiple candidates held in the country for decades.

Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar, the other two candidates that stood for election, won 4.3 and 3.2 percent respectively, according to Al Jazeera English.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has secured a landslide victory in a wartime election that was condemned as a sham by his opponents but demonstrated his tenacious hold on power after three years of brutal civil war.

The question is not whether the elections in Egypt and Syria are democratic or not. They are clearly not. But when did democracy visit these countries anyway? The closest Arab countries in the Middle East have come to democracy is in Iraq and that is only because the old mold was broken by the U.S. invasion.

Turkey has re-installed an encrypted, long-range radio to its territory at the Süleyman Shah Tomb in Syria, despite the al-Assad regime’s objection in the past, military sources have told daily Hürriyet.

Turkey has re-installed an encrypted, long-range radio to its territory at the Süleyman Shah Tomb in Syria, despite the al-Assad regime’s objection in the past, military sources have told daily Hürriyet.

Syrians are voting in a presidential election on Tuesday, with incumbent Bashar al-Assad in pole position to win a third term.

The opposition has labeled the vote as a "farce", manipulated by the ruling party. Polling stations have only been opened in the government-controlled areas, while people in the rebel-held regions will not be able to have their say, the BBC reports.

Syrians voted as fighting raged June 3 in a presidential election in which Bashar al-Assad is looking to tighten his grip as his forces battle rebels in a devastating three-year war.

Assad is facing two little-known challengers and is expected to win, despite a massive rebellion and a war which the U.N. has warned is likely to drag on even longer as a result of the vote.

Voting offices opened June 3 in Syrian regime-held areas for a presidential election that Bashar al-Assad is expected to win, and that has been slammed as a "farce" by the opposition.

A car bomb killed at least 10 people in a Syrian government-held area of the central province of Homs on Monday, state media said, the eve of an election expected to be won easily by President Bashar al-Assad.
  
Syrian television said the explosion caused major damage in nearby houses.
   

A Frenchman with suspected ties to Islamic radicals in Syria has been arrested over last week’s fatal shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, investigation sources told AFP June 1.