A Syrian official and activists say dozens of people have been killed or wounded over the past three days in stepped-up rebel attacks on government-held areas in the northern city of Aleppo.
The attacks are the latest ahead of the country’s presidential election today, a highly contentious vote amid a civil war that has killed more than 160,000 people.
The Syrian opposition and its Western allies have denounced the balloting as a sham. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is widely expected to win a third seven-year term.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights yesterday said that 50 people have been killed in Aleppo since Saturday.
Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said 20 people were killed on Saturday alone.
Rebels have threatened to disrupt the voting in opposition-held areas.
Campaigning for the presidential election wrapped up on Sunday. With swathes of Syria out of government control, today’s vote will only take place in regime-held territory, far from where al-Assad’s forces are battling the rebels who seek to topple him.
Al-Assad’s opponents have dubbed the vote a “parody of democracy” and urged Syrians to boycott the vote in which al-Assad’s sole competitors — lawmaker Maher al-Hajjar and businessman Hassan al-Nouri — are little know and seen as token rivals.
On Sunday, the ruling Baath Party, which has dominated Syria for more than half a century, called for people to re-elect al-Assad.
The president was chosen by referendum in 2000 following the death of the former president, his father and veteran strongman, Hafez al-Assad.
By choosing Bashar al-Assad, Syrians would be voting “for a leader ... who faces the war ... for the iconic leader Bashar al-Assad who has stayed at the side of his people in all corners of the homeland,” the ruling party said in a statement.
In an apparent bid to shore up the support of Sunni Muslims, state television gave a live broadcast of a meeting of Sunni clerics who also urged voters to cast their ballots for the president.
The streets of Damascus were plastered with posters glorifying the president, with little space left for pictures of his rivals.
The poll is aimed at bolstering Bashar al-Assad’s position as he seeks to win at all costs the war he is fighting against the exiled opposition and fragmented rebels weakened by infighting.
In Lebanon, hundreds of Syrian refugees held a protest on Sunday denouncing the polls as a “blood election,” as the death toll from the three-year war has topped an estimated 160,000.
“Our revolution came to topple the sectarian, aggressive regime. How can we be expected to vote it back in?” read a poster carried by a demonstrator.
Meanwhile, senior Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi told ISNA news agency in Tehran on Sunday that delegations from nine countries will monitor the election, including from Russia and Iran.
Boroujerdi said he would travel yesterday to Damascus along with lawmakera from Uganda, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, Venezuela, Tajikistan and the Philippines to link up with Russian and Lebanese teams.
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