Myanmar security forces have committed widespread rape against women and girls as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Thursday.

The 37-page report, “All of My Body Was Pain: Sexual Violence Against Rohingya Women and Girls in Burma,” documents the Myanmar military’s gang rape of Rohingya women and girls and further acts of violence, cruelty, and humiliation.

Many women described witnessing the murders of their young children, spouses, and parents.

“Rape has been a prominent and devastating feature of the Burmese (Myanmar) military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya,” said Skye Wheeler, women’s rights emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

“The Burmese military’s barbaric acts of violence have left countless women and girls brutally harmed and traumatized.”

According to HRW, since August 25 the military has committed killings, rapes, arbitrary arrests, and mass arson of homes in hundreds of predominantly Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine State, forcing more than 600,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

Human Rights Watch has found that these abuses amount to crimes against humanity under international law. The military operations were sparked by attacks by the armed group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on 30 security force outposts and an army base that killed 11 Burmese security personnel.

This report was released just a day after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the US is deeply concerned by "credible reports" of atrocities committed by Myanmar's security forces and called for an independent investigation into a humanitarian crisis in which hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh.

Speaking at a joint news conference with leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar's capital, Tillerson said the US would consider individual sanctions against people found responsible for the violence, but he would not advise "broad-based economic sanctions" against the entire country.

"All of that has to be evidence-based," Tillerson said.

"If we have credible information that we believe to be very reliable that certain individuals were responsible for certain acts that we find unacceptable, then targeted sanctions on individuals very well may be appropriate," he said.

Tillerson was on a one-day visit to the country and also met with Myanmar's powerful military chief, Min Aung Hlaing, who is in charge of operations in Rakhine.

Although Suu Kyi has been the de facto head of Myanmar's civilian government since her party swept elections in 2015, she is limited in her control of the country by a constitution written under the military junta that ruled Myanmar for decades. The military is in charge of the operations in northern Rakhine, and ending them is not up to Suu Kyi.

Still, Suu Kyi has faced widespread criticism for not speaking out in defense of the Rohingya. At Wednesday's news conference Suu Kyi denied she had been silent on the issue, saying she had personally commented on the situation as well as issued statements through her office, NBC reported.

"I haven't been silent," she said. "What people mean is what I say is not interesting enough. But what I say is not meant to be exciting. It's meant to be accurate. And it's aimed at creating more harmony and a better future for everybody. Not setting people against each other."

But UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said he was "hugely disappointed" in Suu Kyi, noting that he appealed to her after a smaller scale flight of Rohingya last October "to use all her emotional standing and moral standing inside the country to confront the military and put an end to this."

NBC reported al-Hussein as saying that "evidently, she was unable to do that and now she speaks in compassionate terms."

But he said he fears the Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 won't be able to return "because the operations were so systematic, so organized, so well-planned, that . there was intent involved."

"I believe it rises to the threshold of very serious violations, international crimes," he said.

Myanmar's military has denied the accusations. The military said it had interviewed thousands of people during a monthlong investigation into the conduct of troops in Rakhine.

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