To reach Aqrab is to penetrate deep into the badlands of central Syria, where many of the worst atrocities of the war have taken place.
It is not a journey undertaken lightly, and 24 hours of intense planning were needed before we were able to drive west from the provincial capital, Hama.
Even then, an onboard escort was necessary, and we were passed from escort vehicle to escort vehicle across the patchwork of villages on the central fertile plains.
Local knowledge is very much the difference between life and death in a place where a wrong turn can mean the wrong people who find the wrong papers on you – with consequences that are all too often fatal.
So a drive of just 10 miles or so as the crow flies took us over an hour. And then, coming over yet another rocky ridge, there it was: Aqrab.
Eye-witness accounts
It’s a small place, and we were under a mile away. A low-rise, densely packed town of 9,000 Sunni and 2,000 Alawites. Three large minarets pierce the glowering winter skies here.
What follows is a series of eye-witness accounts which runs almost entirely against the version of what happened here which has gone global from rebel propaganda websites.
We do not say what follows is the truth. But we can say it is the first independently observed story of Aqrab from the first outside journalist to reach this area.
http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/happened-syrian-town-aqrab/3426