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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won a landslide victory in presidential poll securing 88.7 percent of the vote, parliament speaker Mohammad al-Laham has said , Agency reported.

Assad's two challengers, Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar, won 4.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.

The victory gives Assad a third seven-year term in office despite a raging civil war which grew out of protests against his rule.

The head of the Supreme Constitutional Court said on Wednesday that the turnout in the country's presidential election this week was 73.42 percent.

"I declare the victory of Dr Bashar Hafez al-Assad as president of the Syrian Arab Republic with an absolute majority of the votes cast in the election," Laham said in a televised address from his office in the Syrian parliament.

The opposition and its international backers have denounced the election as a farce.

Voting was held only in government-controlled areas, excluding vast chunks of northern and eastern Syria that are in rebel hands.

Multiple candidates

For the first time in decades, there were multiple candidates on the ballot. In previous presidential elections, Assad and before him his father, Hafez, were elected in single candidate referendums in which voters cast yes-no ballots.

Assad faced two practically unknown competitors - Maher al-Hajjad and Hassan al-Nuri.

Minutes after results were announced, people took to the streets in Damascus to celebrate.

Celebratory shots fired by Assad supporters killed at least three people in the capital and wounded dozens more, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Earlier on Wednesday, the US Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to neighbouring Lebanon that the elections were "a great big zero."

"They are meaningless, and they are meaningless because you can't have an election where millions of your people don't even have the ability to vote, where they don't have the ability to contest the election, and they have no choice," Kerry told reporters in Beirut.

The European Union on Wednesday urged Assad to re-engage in talks, condemning the vote as illegitimate.

"These elections are illegitimate and undermine the political efforts to find a solution to this horrific conflict," it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, an international delegation led by allies of Assad praised the elections saying they were democratic and transparent.