"On 4 January 2019 the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, launched coordinated attacks on four police posts in northern Rakhine State, killing 13 police officers and injuring nine others. The attacks – which came after months of low-level yet steadily increasing clashes between the group and the Myanmar military – triggered a major escalation in the conflict. Since then, Rakhine State – the site of the military’s horrific attacks on the Rohingya population in October and November 2016, and again from August 2017 – has plunged further into crisis. Days after the AA attacks, a government spokesperson announced that the military, officially known as the Tatmadaw, had been instructed to “crush” the AA. The military deployed additional combat division troops to the region, and the authorities suspended humanitarian access for most UN agencies and international humanitarian organizations. In the months that have followed, the fighting has intensified with regular clashes between the two parties. As is so often the case in Myanmar, civilians have paid the heaviest cost. This briefing documents violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses in Rakhine State since 4 January 2019, the overwhelming majority of which have been committed by the Myanmar military. It is based on research undertaken between January and May 2019, including 81 interviews with people directly affected by the conflict, 54 of which were done in-person in Rakhine State in March 2019 and another 27 by telephone. In addition, Amnesty International interviewed local and international humanitarian officials; local human rights activists; and journalists covering the conflict. The organization also reviewed photographs and videos related to human rights violations and analysed satellite imagery of the affected areas. Amnesty International’s research found that the military has fired indiscriminately in civilian areas, killing and injuring civilians and damaging homes and other property. Compounding the situation, soldiers have at times obstructed access to medical treatment for civilians injured by such attacks. In late January, a seven-yearold ethnic Rakhine boy died after a mortar exploded in Tha Mee Hla village, Rathedaung Township, during fighting between the AA and Myanmar military. Although he was severely injured, it took several hours before soldiers gave his family permission to take him to a hospital; he died the following day. In another incident in early April, a helicopter opened fire on Rohingya workers cutting bamboo in the forest close to the Sai Din waterfall in Buthidaung Township, killing at least six civilians and injuring at least 13 more. An ethnic Rohingya man who was severely injured during the attacks told Amnesty International, “The helicopter came from behind the mountain. Within minutes it fired rockets… I was running for my life thinking about my family and how I would survive..." .....“၂၀၁၉ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၄ ရက်နေ့တွင် ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်မတော် (အေအေ) က ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်မြောက်ပိုင်းရှိ ရဲစခန်းလေးခုကို တစ်ပြိုင်တည်း တိုက်ခိုက်ခဲ့သဖြင့် ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင် ၁၃ ဦးသေဆုံးပြီး ကိုးဦးဒဏ်ရာရခဲ့သည်။ ပြီးခဲ့သည့်လပေါင်းများစွာကတည်းက အေအေအဖွဲ့နှင့် မြန်မာ့တပ်မတော်တို့အကြား တိုက်ပွဲလေးများ တစတစတိုးမြှင့်ဖြစ်ပွါးနေခဲ့ရာမှ ယခုတိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် တိုက်ပွဲ၏အရှိန်အဟုန် ကြီးမားစွာ ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာခဲ့သည်။ ယင်းအချိန်မှစ၍ ၂၀၁၆ အောက်တိုဘာလနှင့် တစ်ဖန် ၂၀၁၇ သြဂုတ်လမှစတင်ပြီး ရိုဟင်ဂျာများအပေါ်စစ်တပ်က ရက်စက်စွာတိုက်ခိုက်ခဲ့သော ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်တွင် ကြီးမားသော ပဌိပက္ခကြီးတစ်ရပ်ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာခဲ့သည်။ အေအေ၏တိုက်ခိုက်မှု ပေါ်ပေါက်ခဲ့ပြီး ရက်ပိုင်းအတွင်းမှာပင်…”