TEHRAN – Residents in southern Syria compelled the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to retreat from a village.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that residents of Ruwayhina village in Syria’s Quneitra province forced out an Israeli patrol after it entered the area.

This incident comes amid repeated incursions and a sharp escalation by the IOF, met with no response from Syria’s new government.

Villagers in central Quneitra countryside confronted the IOF after they entered the village and harassed civilians.

Angered by the intrusion, residents hurled stones at the military vehicles and set fire to an Israeli flag after tearing it down from one of the vehicles.

The event reflects continued grassroots resistance to the Israeli occupation of southern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It follows a series of similar Israeli invasions in both Quneitra and the neighboring Daraa province in southwestern Syria.

Local sources said the Israeli patrol provoked villagers by harassing passersby, which led to an immediate reaction from the residents.

The episode underscores growing community unrest in response to the expanding Israeli military occupation in Syria.

In a separate case, a unit of six IOF vehicles entered the Yarmouk Basin region in western Daraa.

The convoy briefly stationed itself along the road between two villages before retreating shortly afterward. No further information was available about the motive or outcome of that incursion, according to the Syrian Observatory.

Just days earlier, two Israeli tanks and two military vehicles moved from a former Syrian army base toward a village in the Quneitra countryside.

Since the collapse of the previous government in December 2024, Syria has experienced repeated Israeli attacks, including ground raids and unprecedented airstrikes in several regions, including the capital.

The new government in Damascus has yet to respond to the escalating and illegal Israeli occupation and aggression.

Israeli strikes targeted Syria's coastal cities of Latakia and Tartous, killing one person, the Syrian state news agency reported on Friday, despite recent talks between Israel and Syria's interim government.

The Israeli military confirmed shortly after it struck what it called as weapon storage facilities containing missiles that "posed a threat to international and Israeli maritime freedom of navigation" in Latakia.