A still image taken from video shows Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaking as he is sworn in for a new seven-year term at the presidential palace in Damascus July 16, 2014.
President Bashar al-Assad was sworn in for a new seven-year term on state television on Wednesday after an election victory that underlined his grip on power more than three years into Syria's civil war.
State TV broadcast what it said was a live ceremony on Wednesday from the presidential palace in Damascus during which Assad took the oath of office.
Assad was seen placing his hand on Islam's holy book, the Quran, pledging to honor the country's constitution in front of a large audience of parliament members and Muslim and Christian clergymen.
Assad was re-elected last month in a landslide victory amid a civil war in a vote dismissed by the opposition and its Western allies as a sham.
He won 88.7 percent of the ballots cast in the first multi candidate elections in decades. The voting didn't take place in areas engulfed in fighting.