Cairo. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt was sworn in for a third six-year term on Tuesday after being re-elected in a December vote in which he faced no serious challengers.

El-Sissi took the oath of office before parliament, which convened in the new administrative capital in the desert outside Cairo.

He won 89.6 percent of the vote in the December election, with a turnout of 66.8 percent of more than 67 million registered voters. He ran against three virtually unknown opponents.

The vote was overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza on Egypt’s eastern border, which has threatened to expand into wider regional turmoil.

El-Sissi was first elected as president in mid-2014, then reelected in 2018. A year later, constitutional amendments, passed in a general referendum, added two years to el-Sissi’s second term and allowed him to run for a third, six-year term.

His victory in this latest election was widely seen as inevitable. His three opponents were marginal political figures who were rarely seen during the election campaign.