Civilian deaths mount as U.S. secret unit pounds IS in Syria: NYT

A U.S. military vehicle runs past the Tal Tamr area in the countryside of Hasakah province, northeastern Syria, on Nov. 14, 2019. (Str/Xinhua)

The strike cell "circumvented rules imposed to protect noncombatants, and alarmed its partners in the military and the CIA by killing people who had no role in the conflict: farmers trying to harvest, children in the street, families fleeing fighting, and villagers sheltering in buildings," The New York Times reported.

NEW YORK, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- A single top secret U.S. strike cell launched tens of thousands of bombs and missiles against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria, but in the process of hammering an enemy, the shadowy force sidestepped safeguards and repeatedly killed civilians, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

The strike cell "circumvented rules imposed to protect noncombatants, and alarmed its partners in the military and the CIA by killing people who had no role in the conflict: farmers trying to harvest, children in the street, families fleeing fighting, and villagers sheltering in buildings," the paper said.

Based on interviews with multiple current and former military and intelligence officials, the report found that the unit was called Talon Anvil.

People walk at the Yarmouk Camp in the south of Damascus, Syria, on Nov. 17, 2021. (Photo by Ammar Safarjalani/Xinhua)

It worked in three shifts around the clock between 2014 and 2019, pinpointing targets for the United States to hit: convoys, car bombs, command centers and squads of enemy fighters.

According to the report, Talon Anvil was small -- at times fewer than 20 people operating from anonymous rooms cluttered with flat screens -- but played an outsize role in the 112,000 bombs and missiles launched against the IS, in part because it embraced a loose interpretation of the military's rules of engagement.

Every year when the strike cell operated, the civilian casualty rate in Syria increased significantly, Larry Lewis, a former Pentagon and State Department adviser who co-authored a 2018 Defense Department report on civilian harm, was quoted as saying.

Lewis, who has viewed the Pentagon's classified civilian casualty data for Syria, said the rate was 10 times that of similar operations he tracked in Afghanistan.

"It was much higher than I would have expected from a U.S. unit," said Lewis. "The fact that it increased dramatically and steadily over a period of years shocked me."