DAMASCUS —  Syrian President Bashar al-Assad declared on Monday, April 28, he would seek reelection in June, defying calls from his opponents to step aside and allow a political solution to the country’s devastating civil war.

Assad formally submitted his nomination to Syria’s constitutional court to stand in an election which his Western and Arab foes have dismissed as a parody of democracy.

He is the seventh person to put himself forward for Syria’s first multi-candidate presidential vote in decades, but none of his rivals are expected to mount a serious challenge to 44 years of Assad family rule.

The announcement was made in parliament by speaker Mohammad al-Laham, who read out Assad’s submission. “I … Dr. Bashar Hafez al Assad … wish to nominate myself for the post of president of the republic, hoping that parliament will endorse it,” it said.

State media said crowds gathered to celebrate the coming election and recent military gains by Assad’s forces who, supported by foreign allies, have turned the tide of a war which 18 months ago challenged his control over Damascus.

“As soon as we heard that the president announced his candidacy we came down to the streets to celebrate because we cannot see any future Syria without his excellency President Bashar al-Assad,” said Khadija Hashma, one of about 100 people demonstrating in the central Damascus district of Mezzeh.

In a statement minutes after his candidacy was announced, Assad appealed for restraint and said any “demonstration of joy” should be responsible, urging people not to fire celebratory shots in the air.

Syria’s opposition leaders in exile, barred from standing by a constitutional clause requiring candidates to have lived in Syria continuously for 10 years, dismissed the vote as a charade.

The constitution also says candidates must have the backing of 35 members of the pro-Assad parliament, effectively ruling out dissenting voices from the campaign.

On Tuesday, a day after Assad announced his candidacy, two car bombs struck in a government-controlled part of Homs.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the death toll from those bombs had risen to 100 by Wednesday. 

A mortar attack on a school near Damascus, which authorities blamed on “terrorists” battling Assad, also killed at least 14 people on Wednesday. Syrian state news agency SANA said two teachers were wounded in a separate attack when mortar shells exploded near a school in the central Damascus district of Qanawat on Thursday.

On Wednesday, an air strike on a school in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo killed at least 18 people, mainly children, according to the Observatory.

The Observatory put the death toll from the attack at 18, while the Aleppo Media Centre said 25 children had been killed.

Clashes between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters killed 14 rebels in a flare-up overnight along a strategic corridor between Damascus and the Lebanese border, activists said Thursday.

The fighting in Zabadani – a town near Damascus and the last rebel stronghold in the area – is part of the larger battle for control of the mountainous Qalamoun region, stretching from the Syrian capital to the border with Lebanon.