A/HRC/31/49 perceived support for the other side. The attacks, such as the beating of Nuer civilians accused of supporting the Dinka in Bentiu, and assaults against Shilluk civilians in Malakal, may constitute collective punishment in contravention of article 4(2) (b) of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions. The team identified a pattern of SPLA and opposition “tactical withdrawals” that left local populations vulnerable, including to retribution from opposing forces. Given the considerable danger arising from the military operations, safety measures should have been taken to avoid incidental losses, or in any case to reduce them to a minimum. 2. Sexual and gender-based violence 25. The assessment team confirmed that sexual and gender-based violence continued in 2015, and on a widespread basis in Unity State. 26. In Unity State, the Protection Cluster in South Sudan reported more than 1,300 cases of rape between April 2015 and September 2015.5 Alarmingly, some of the women to whom the assessment team spoke reported that sexual violence and rape had increased in Unity State as the conflict progressed. 27. The assessment team received information that the armed militias, mainly comprising youths from Mayom or Koch counties who carry out attacks together with the SPLA, do so under an agreement of “do what you can and take what you can”. In one case, a mother of four children gave a harrowing account of how she was separated from her group while walking from her village to Bentiu. When she reached another village, she encountered a group of soldiers and armed men in civilian clothing who accused her of lying about from where she had arrived. The men stripped her naked, then five soldiers raped her on the roadside in front of her children. She was subsequently dragged into the bush by another two soldiers, who raped her there. When she eventually returned to the roadside, her children, aged between two and seven, were missing. At the time of the drafting, her children were still missing. 28. One woman described how, during an attack on her village in Koch, in October 2015, SPLA soldiers, after killing her husband, had tied her to a tree and forced her to watch as her 15-year-old daughter was raped by at least 10 soldiers. In another incident, an 18-year-old girl explained to the team how, in early October 2015, during an attack on Gandor, in Leer County, she had been found by SPLA soldiers, who beat and raped her twice before handing her over to two armed men in civilian clothing who also raped her. Upon her return home, she learned that her three sisters and mother had also been raped. 29. In Upper Nile, as in Unity State, sexual and gender-based violence often followed armed clashes, and targeted women belonging to the ethnic groups of opposing forces or on suspicion of belonging to the opposition. In Maban County, the assessment team received allegations of the rape of four girls during clashes between the SPLA and opposition forces in Liang, Maban County. It also received credible reports of the sexual assault of elderly women by opposition forces in Pigi County, Jonglei State, close to the border with Upper Nile. 30. Between April and December 2015, protection actors documented numerous allegations of abduction, rape, killing and disappearance of women (mostly Shilluk) from 5 6 See South Sudan Protection Cluster, Protection Situation Update: Southern and Central Unity (April – September 2015); and Flash Update, Protection Situation in Southern and Central Unity (September – October 2015).