Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
, the Supreme Constitutional Court announced Thursday as the application deadline expired.
The vote, scheduled for June 3, is expected to return to power Assad, the embattled president who has faced a three-year-old armed revolt. But there has been no shortage of would-be challengers.
The court will now spend five days examining the 24 hopefuls to see if they meet electoral criteria to run for office in Syria's first multi-candidate presidential vote.
A maximum of three candidates are expected to figure on the final list.
"At 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) on Thursday May 1, 2014, the period for submitting presidential candidacy ended," court head Adnan Zureiq said, quoted on state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
.
"Twenty-four requests for candidacy for the post of Syrian president" had been submitted and the court would begin work Friday to examine which candidates met electoral criteria.
The results, he said, would be announced within five days.
To add their name on the ballot, candidates must win approval from at least 35 of parliament's 250 politicians, as well as meet criteria including having lived in Syria for the past decade.
The rules effectively ruled out the participation of the country's leading opposition figures, who are in exile.
The Baath party headed by Assad has 161 deputies, all of whom are expected to give him their support, meaning no more than two other candidates are likely to make the cut.
Assad's would-be challengers are all largely unknown and include two women and one Christian man.
Syria's constitution requires that candidates for the presidency be Moslem, but a source in the court said this week that all applications would be received and then examined in line with the rules.
The constitution contains no explicit prohibition on female candidates, but its phrasing implies only male candidates are permitted.
The election will be the first since a constitutional amendment scrapped a system of presidential referendums.
Assad, who succeeded his father in office in 2000, after his death, is expected to sweep to victory despite the brutal civil war ravaging the country.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Syrian warplanes hit a popular market in a rebel-held district of Aleppo, killing at least 33 civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Several people were also maimed in the attack that targeted the market in the Halak neighborhood in northeastern Aleppo, the Britannia-based monitor said.
Rebel-held areas of Aleppo have come under massive air assault since mid-December as government forces try to regain full control of Syria's second city and one-time commercial hub.
"A Syrian fighter jet fired a missile at the (Halak) neighborhood, and within minutes it fired another," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The Aleppo Media Center run by local activists said that "two residential buildings were destroyed and several shops set ablaze."
Activists posted a YouTube video showing an ambulance trying to make its way across rubble to the site and the facades of buildings badly damaged.
Youths are seen carrying the body of a man in a rug as others dig through rubble for victims.
A man is heard crying "
The authenticity of the video could not be immediately verified.
Thursday's air raids come a day after the Observatory reported that twin air strikes on a school in the Ansari neighborhood controlled by faceless myrmidons killed 18 people, 10 of them children.
Aleppo-based citizen journalist Mohammed al-Khatib told AFP by Skype that the children were "holding a drawing exhibition when two air strikes, 10 minutes apart, struck the school."
The Observatory, which relies on activists and medics on the ground for its reports on the three-year war in Syria, said that at least one teacher was also among the dead in Wednesday's strikes.
Rebel bombardments of regime-held areas of Aleppo have also intensified in the past few weeks.
On Sunday, rebels fired mortar rounds into parts of the Old City where government forces are entrenched and into other areas of Aleppo, killing more than 20 people.
The rebels have been trying to advance into the Old City.
Regime forces have also stepped up the use of barrel bombs dropped by helicopter on rebel positions in recent weeks, according to the Observatory.
More than 150,000 people have been killed, and nearly half the population has been displaced by the fighting.
The conflict has left large swathes of Syria beyond the control of the government, which has not explained how it will organize voting nationwide.