The news agency obtained what is said to be video footage of the incident, showing villagers from the communities of Dashisha and Cahira standing in front of a group of US armored vehicles, one of them fitted with an American flag, facing away from the group of civilians.

The man with the camera can be seen moving forward, approaching to within a few meters of the closest vehicle. Another of the armored vehicles in the distance is seen turning around, and the vehicles are then seen moving back in the direction they came from.

The incident is the latest of a series of mostly nonviolent confrontations taking place in northeast Syria in recent weeks, with a pattern established of residents of small communities, occasionally flanked by Syrian troops, setting up roadblocks using vehicles or their own bodies, and US armored columns turning around and heading back the way they came from. At least four similar incidents took place in the Hasakah countryside last month.

Occasionally, violent incidents are also reported. Last month, an unidentified group of forces attacked and disabled a Hummer believed to be carrying US and Syrian Democratic Forces militia troops, injuring several troops outside the village of Rouwaished, Hasakah. The Pentagon did not comment on that alleged incident.

The US military has quietly built up its presence in northeast Syria over the past eight months, dispatching dozens of truckloads military and logistical equipment to the country from Iraq with the aim of carrying out President Trump’s instructions to “keep” the region’s oil. US forces shifted the scope and purpose of their operation in Syria last October in the wake of the abortive Turkish invasion of the Middle Eastern country, redeploying forces from northeast Syria’s border with Turkey to oil and gas fields. Damascus has demanded the immediate withdrawal of all uninvited foreign forces and their proxies from the country, and promised to do whatever is required to return control of every inch of Syrian territory to the control of its internationally recognized government.

Reporter’s code: 50101