WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2021) A secret US strike cell called Talon Anvil was responsible for civilian casualties in Syria resulting from air strikes intended to target members of the Islamic State terrorist organization (IS, banned in Russia) only, The New York Times reports.
Talon Anvil, which officially never existed, operated in 2014 - 2019 and was run by a classified US Special Operations unit called Task Force 9 that oversaw the ground offensive in Syria, the newspaper said on Sunday.
The unit rushed to destroy "enemies" and sidestepped safeguards, circumventing important rules that helped protect civilians. Thus, the bombs and missiles intended for IS targets ended up killing innocent villagers and children in Syria, multiple current and former military and intelligence officials told The New York Times.
"They were ruthlessly efficient and good at their jobs," one former Air Force intelligence officer who worked on Talon Anvil missions from 2016 to 2018 told the newspaper. "But they also made a lot of bad strikes."
Some members of Talon Anvil even refused to participate in strikes targeting people who appeared to be innocent bystanders. The majority of the strikes were ordered by relatively low-ranking US Army Delta Force commandos in Talon Anvil, and were labeled as defensive strikes in order to limit oversight, according to The New York Times.
Complaints and analytical feedback pointing to alarmingly high levels of civilian casualties from Talon Anvil strikes were ignored. One Air Force officer told the newspaper that drone crews jerked the cameras away at key moments during the strikes in order to prevent the military from properly assessing the damage.
The armed conflict in Syria has been going on since 2011. In late 2017, the IS was declared defeated in Syria and Iraq, but counterterrorism operations are ongoing.
