Syrian state media said Israeli forces carried out an incursion into the country’s south on Sunday, a day after the visiting UN chief urged an end to Israeli violations and respect for Syria’s sovereignty.
State news agency SANA said that “Israeli occupation forces carried out an incursion early Sunday into the villages of Maariya and Al-Aarda in the Yarmuk basin in the west of Daraa province.”
It said the soldiers, accompanied by three military vehicles and a bulldozer, set up a checkpoint in Al-Aarda, and that forces “dropped leaflets in towns in the Yarmuk basin warning residents against closing roads or obstructing the advance of the vehicles.”
After the December 2024 overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, Israel sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone that had separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Israeli-occupied Golan since 1974.
It has carried out strikes and repeated incursions deeper into Syrian territory.
