Syrian Civil War
The town of Saraqib lies at a strategic junction of the Aleppo-Damascus and Aleppo-Latakia roads. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, from at least April 2011, the town has seen popular opposition to Bashar al-Assad's government.[8] The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that over 200 anti-government activist suspects were arrested when Syrian security forces captured the city on 11 August 2011.[9]
Syrian government forces recaptured the city in the Battle of Saraqib, 24–27 March 2012. On 19 July 2012, at least 25 people were killed in Syrian Army shelling following a raid by a Free Syrian Army unit based in the city on a Syrian Army checkpoint.[10] Between 30 October and 1 November 2012, al-Nusra and Liwa Dawud—then a sub-unit of Suqour al-Sham—coordinated an attack on three government checkpoints at entrances to the town.[11]
On 23 January 2017, Ahrar al-Sham captured Saraqib from Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.[12] On 19 July 2017 the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham alliance, which was created after the merger of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and other rebel factions, recaptured the city from Ahrar al-Sham militants.[13] Saraqib was bombed in September 2017 as part of a government/Russian offensive against rebel territories in Idlib and Hama.[14]
On 3 February 2018, Russian military pilot Roman Filipov's Su-25SM jet was shot down by Tahrir al-Sham and Jaysh al-Nasr militants over the Idlib Governorate, near the town of Maarrat al-Nu'man (57 km (35 mi) north of the city of Hama), or the town of Saraqib, according to other sources,[15][16] with a shoulder launched surface to air missile. He committed suicide by blowing his grenade to avoid capture.
On 15 October 2018, the Guardians of Religion Organization which is al-Qaeda's branch in Syria published a video in Saraqib which showed the group's religious police, the hisbah, driving around the city with loudspeakers calling on people to adhere to sharia.[17]
In July 2019, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham raided an ISIL base in the city, arresting several individuals including an individual reportedly associated with ISIL's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, resulting in clashes between ISIL and HTS fighters; during the fighting several improvised explosive devices were detonated by ISIL.[18]
On 6 February 2020, the city fell to the Syrian Army in the 5th Northwestern Syria offensive,[19] but had been retaken weeks later by 26 February during a Syrian opposition and Turkish counter attack.[20] On 1 March 2020, Saraqib was once again under Syrian Army control.[21] On 2 March 2020, the Russian Reconciliation Centre in Syria announced that Russian Military Police had been deployed to the city.[22]