During the Kosovo War thousands of Kosovo Albanian women and girls became victims of sexual violence. War rape was used as a weapon of war and an instrument of systematicethnic cleansing; rape was used to terrorize the civilian population, extort money from families, and force people to flee their homes. According to a report by the Human Rights Watch group in 2000, rape in the Kosovo can generally be subdivided into three categories: rapes in woman's homes, rapes during fighting, and rapes in detention.[52][53] The majority of the perpetrators were Serbian paramilitaries, but they also included Serbian special police or Yugoslav army soldiers.[52][53] Virtually all of the sexual assaults Human Rights Watch documented were gang rapes involving at least two perpetrators.[52][53] Since the end of the war, rapes of Serbian, Albanian, and Roma women by ethnic Albanians—sometimes by members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) -- have also been documented.[52][53] Rapes occurred frequently in the presence, and with the acquiescence, of military officers. Soldiers, police, and paramilitaries often raped their victims in the full view of numerous witnesses.[39]