Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad cast his vote on Wednesday in the country’s presidential election at a polling station in the former rebel stronghold of Douma.

Douma saw some of the fiercest fighting of the civil war but is now back under government control.

It is part of the Eastern Ghouta region that touches the outskirts of the capital Damascus. Eastern Ghouta town was where a suspected chemical attack took place in April, 2018, that prompted Western missile strikes against several suspected chemical weapons facilities in Syria.