The Defense Department has quietly halted its practice of issuing detailed “strike releases,” periodic reports that provided information about bombings targeting Islamic State fighters, buildings, and equipment in Iraq and Syria.

The change comes as the U.S. military has ramped up its bombing offensive against ISIS in eastern Syria following President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of a troop withdrawal last month. While many of the U.S.-led coalition’s actions against ISIS were shrouded in secrecy, the strike releases, which the military has been issuing since the start of the campaign against ISIS in 2014, were valuable tools for watchdogs that work to corroborate reports of civilian casualties.

“The only claim I’ve seen publicly made is that with ISIS almost beat, there’s less need for detailed releases,” said Chris Woods, the founder of Airwars, a London-based nonprofit that monitors and assesses civilian harm from bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. “Yet both strikes and civilian harm are at their highest levels since Raqqa. Reducing transparency is entirely counterproductive in our view.”

In a note appended to the top of its January 4 strike release, the Defense Department announced that strike releases would be cut from weekly to biweekly. The subtext of the announcement is that even with biweekly releases, transparency about the bombings, including the dates of specific strikes and the buildings or groups targeted, has become the latest collateral damage.

Between December 16 and December 29, 2018, the coalition against ISIS “conducted 469 strikes consisting of 1,001 engagements in Syria, and conducted nine strikes consisting of 14 engagements in Iraq,” the strike release read. No dates were provided and targets were so vaguely described (“fighting positions,” “seven buildings”) that researching specific bombings is nearly impossible.

Previous strike releases, such as this one from December 19, 2018, provided specific information, including dates, cities, and towns affected, and specific targets.

In announcing the policy change, the U.S. military said frequent strike releases were not necessary due to “the degradation of ISIS” and “decreased kinetic activities against the terrorist organization.”

But this explanation doesn’t match the reality on the ground; though ISIS has lost much of its territory, the group continues to fight back in the sliver of Syria that remains under its control. On Tuesday, a suicide bombing by ISIS killed nine of the group’s militants and 23 members of the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led group leading the charge against ISIS on the ground.

The military’s rationale for curbing strike releases also contradicts statements by its own officials. In a January 3 statement provided to The Intercept, the Defense Department acknowledged an “increase in strikes in late December” targeting ISIS in eastern Syria. The Defense Department did not respond to questions about changes to strike releases. Instead, Defense Department officials on Tuesday provided a statement that again acknowledged the increased strikes in December against ISIS. “We will continue in our mission until we and our partners have achieved an enduring defeat of ISIS,” the statement read.