The Talon Anvil squad… the mysterious force in the US army in Syria

The New York Times revealed some information about the “Talon Anvil” squad, which was used by the US forces in their war against the organization that calls itself the “Islamic State” in Syria and Iraq, during the past years.

The New York Times described the division as a “very secret US combat cell”, responsible for dropping tens of thousands of bombs and missiles within the areas that were under the control of the organization and where its members are active.

But according to current and former military and intelligence officials, the secret squad went beyond the rules imposed to protect civilians, killing people who had no part in the conflict such as some “farmers trying to harvest, children in the streets, families fleeing the fighting, villagers taking shelter in buildings”.

The New York Times confirmed that the killing of civilians by the “Talon Anvil” squad disturbed the CIA.

“They were ruthlessly efficient and good at their jobs,” said a former Air Force intelligence officer who served hundreds of covert squad assignments from 2016 to 2018… however, they also took a lot of bad strikes”.

In its report, the New York Times indicated that the division was responsible for the killing of dozens of people in the town of Baghouz, eastern Syria, in March 2019, after US warplanes launched two raids and dropped 2,500-pound bombs.

The US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, asked “Central Command” to open a high-level investigation into the strike in Baghouz, which was carried out by the “Talon Anvil” squad.

Last month, the New York Times revealed in an investigation that dozens of people were killed in the town of Baghouz in 2019.

In the details of the incident, the New York Times said that “in the last days of the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, when members of the ferocious Caliphate were trapped in a dirt field next to a town called al Baghouz, a US military drone flew overhead, searching for It was far from military targets, but it only witnessed a large crowd of women and children gathered on the bank of a river”.

“A US military drone, F-15E, dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, followed by a second plane dropping a 2,000-pound bomb, killing 70 people,” New York Times added, stressing that the whole attack took about 12 minutes.

The “Talon Anvil” didn’t exist before, and was created in 2014 by a “mysterious and secret special operations unit called Task Force 9”, which oversaw the ground attack of the coalition forces led by Washington in Syria.

The Talon Anvil Squad was small, with fewer than 20 people, operating from “crowded anonymous rooms,” but it “played a huge role in launching 112,000 bombs and missiles against the Islamic State”.

The group began its work in the Iraqi city of Erbil, where it made simple office spaces as its center, before “moving into Syria as the war progressed there” and the expansion of the control of the “Islamic State” elements.

According to the newspaper, the band’s work moved to the factory of the French “Lafarge” company, which is located in the Jalabiya area, about 100 km north of Raqqa.

Then the band’s work moved to a residential complex near the Iraqi border, near the city of al Mayadin in Deir al Zour.

A former member of the task force said, “Talon Anvil used first names and had no ranks or uniforms, and many had beards and went to work in pants and shoes”.

The division worked to intercept secret electronic conversations, find targets for the organization that was later defeated in the last stronghold of al Baghuz, then hit them with munitions from drones or with the help of other coalition aircraft, and coordinated the air support of the allied Syria Democratic Forces fighting on the ground.

It also “worked in three shifts around the clock between 2014 and 2019, identifying formidable US Air Force targets to strike: convoys, car bombs, command posts, and teams of enemy fighters”.

The Talon Anvil justifies its targeting of civilians as a “defensive strike,” but a former Air Force intelligence officer told the newspaper that he “saw many civilian deaths as a result of the squad’s self-defense tactics”.

The officer said that in 2016, the division killed three men working in an olive grove near the city of Manbij in the countryside of Aleppo, stressing that “the men didn’t have weapons, and they were not near any fighting, but the division insisted that they must be enemy fighters and killed them with a missile”.

In June 2017, the division killed dozens of civilians in the city of Raqqa, when they were boarding makeshift ferries to cross the Euphrates River, according to the officer, who confirmed that “the division claimed that the ferries were carrying enemy fighters, and he watched a high-resolution video as they hit several visitors, which resulted in At least 30 civilians were killed, their bodies washed up in green waters”.