Activists: Syrian opposition fighters retake key town
Source: AP
By BASSEM MROUE
BEIRUT (AP) — Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters Thursday retook a strategic northwestern town in Syria, opposition activists said, and cut off the key highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo, days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012.
Despite the loss of Saraqeb, government forces made major gains to the south, taking control of almost the entire southern part of Idlib province with the capture of more than 20 villages Thursday, state media and opposition activists said.
The retaking of Saraqeb, which sits on the M5 highway, is a setback for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces who have scored major gains in a weekslong Russian-backed campaign in the last rebel stronghold in Idlib province. Officials had hailed the reopening of the motorway as a major victory in the nine-year conflict.
The government’s military campaign to recapture Idlib, the last opposition-held stronghold in the country, has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe and the war’s largest single wave of displacement. According to the U.N., almost 950,000 civilians have been displaced since early December, and more than 300 have been killed. Most have fled farther north to safer areas near the Turkish border, overwhelming camps already crowded with refugees in cold winter weather.
Turkish backed Syrian fighters load ammunition at a frontline near the town of Saraqib in Idlib province, Syria, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. Syrian government forces have captured dozens of villages, including major rebel strongholds, over the past few days in the last opposition-held area in the country's northwest. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
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