Complaints about civilians killed or injured in the U.S. attack on Venezuela are instead being handled by the Pentagon directly.

U.S. Southern Command is unable to cope with the volume of civilian casualty reports stemming from the military mission to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, according to two government officials. Instead, the Pentagon itself is accepting reports directly.

After the U.S. attacked Venezuela in Operation Absolute Resolve on January 3, U.K.-based watchdog group Airwars attempted to submit documentation of civilian casualties to SOUTHCOM, which oversees military operations in Latin America, then soon learned that SOUTHCOM has no mechanism for submitting these reports. After reaching out to the Pentagon, Airwars was told to submit documentation to its Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which is operated by the war secretary and was established to help limit unintended civilian deaths.

Airwars began sending reports of civilian harm incidents on Monday.

“A few days after the strikes, the DoD’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence team reached out to us to understand if we had been documenting civilian harm from U.S. actions,” said Emily Tripp, the executive director of Airwars. “Until SOUTHCOM establishes their own mechanism — as CENTCOM and AFRICOM have — we will be submitting cases directly to the Center of Excellence after we publish them.”Airwars began sending reports of civilian harm incidents on Monday.

“A few days after the strikes, the DoD’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence team reached out to us to understand if we had been documenting civilian harm from U.S. actions,” said Emily Tripp, the executive director of Airwars. “Until SOUTHCOM establishes their own mechanism — as CENTCOM and AFRICOM have — we will be submitting cases directly to the Center of Excellence after we publish them.”

The need for the Pentagon to pick up SOUTHCOM’s slack follows a deemphasis on civilian harm mitigation and corresponding budget cuts across the military as a result of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s efforts to gut programs to reduce civilian casualties. Experts and insiders say that even a small number of civilian casualty reports is now too much for SOUTHCOM to handle. Two government officials told The Intercept that personnel devoted to civilian harm tracking and mitigation at SOUTHCOM had been whittled down from four staff to one contractor.

The Intercept full report