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DAMASCUS — Syria's foreign ministry on Monday condemned Israeli incursions and bombardment in the country's south a day after violence near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that state media and locals said caused residents to briefly flee.
Tensions rose on Sunday in the village of Abidin in the Yarmuk Basin area in the southern province of Daraa after Israeli forces advanced into the area, with angry residents trying to block the road with stones to stop the patrol.
State media and a local official said Israeli forces later responded with artillery fire, prompting residents to flee to nearby villages overnight.
Syria's foreign ministry in a statement condemned "the Israeli attacks represented by incursions into Syrian territory in Quneitra and Daraa provinces and the targeting of the region with artillery shelling", slamming "a blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty and territorial integrity".
After the December 2024 overthrow of Syria's longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, Israel sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that for decades separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan, occupying what it now calls a "security zone" in southern Syria.
It has also carried out repeated incursions deeper into Syrian territory, as well as bombings, and says it wants a demilitarised zone in the country's south.
Mahmud Mowaffaq, a local official in Abidin, told AFP that some residents had "blocked a road for an Israeli patrol that had tried to advance into the village" on Sunday for the first time.
"Residents fled during the night because of the shelling near homes in the village, as Israeli forces deployed nearby," he said, adding that after the troops withdrew, "residents returned on Monday morning".
An AFP photographer saw a resident inspecting an unexploded artillery shell near his home.
According to local organisation Sijil which monitors Israeli operations in Syria, Israeli forces have carried out around 300 operations or "violations" in Daraa and Quneitra provinces this month alone, including 70 incursions and 28 raids, sometimes detaining residents.
The Israeli army said its soldiers on Saturday "eliminated several armed terrorists in the security zone in southern Syria".
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said this month that his country planned to keep troops in Syria "for an unlimited period".
Despite persistent tensions, Israel and Syria's new authorities have held several rounds of direct talks and have agreed to establish an intelligence-sharing mechanism as they edge towards a security agreement.
Israel captured most of the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and later annexed the areas under its control, in a move not recognised by most of the international community.
