Based on interviews with some 100 displaced people, this briefing details how government forces and their allied militias committed war crimes and serious human rights violations during attacks on villages in Leer and Mayendit counties. The attackers deliberately killed civilians, including women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Civilians were also hunted down and killed after fleeing into nearby swamps and women and girls were systematically abducted and raped. The attackers also engaged in a widespread campaign of looting and destruction with the purpose of forcibly displacing civilians and making villages uninhabitable in the future.
