Following the police camp incidents, the Myanmar army began a major crackdown in the villages of northern Rakhine state. In the initial operation, dozens of people were killed and many were arrested. As the crackdown continued, the casualties increased. Arbitrary arrest, extrajudicial killings, gang rapes, brutalities against civilians, and looting were reportedly carried out. According to media reports, hundreds of Rohingya people had been killed by December 2016, and many had fled Myanmar as refugees to take shelter in the nearby areas of Bangladesh.
In late November, Human Rights Watch released satellite images which showed that approximately 1,250 Rohingya houses in five villages had been burned down by the security forces. The media and the human rights groups frequently reported intense human rights violations by the Myanmar military. During one incident in November, the Myanmar military allegedly used helicopters to shoot and kill the villagers after some villagers joined the insurgents in an ambush which killed a senior army officer. The army confirmed that two helicopters mounted with guns dispersed the crowd but denied they shot at civilians. As of November 2016, Myanmar had yet to allow the media and human rights groups to enter the persecuted areas. Consequently, the exact figures of civilian casualties remained unknown. The Rakhine State was termed an "information black hole".
Those who fled Myanmar to escape persecution reported that women had been gang raped, men killed, houses torched, and young children thrown into burning houses. The boats carrying Rohingya refugees on Naf River were often gunned down by the Myanmar army. On 3 February 2017, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report based on interviews with more than 200 Rohingya refugees, which said that the abuses included gang-rape, mass killing, and killing children. Nearly half of the interviewees stated that family members of theirs had been killed. Half of the women interviewed stated that they had been raped or sexually assaulted: the report described the sexual violence as "massive and systematic". The army and police were stated to have burned "homes, schools, markets, shops, and mosques" belonging to or used by the Rohingya people.
In March 2017, a police document obtained by Reuters listed 423 Rohingyas detained by the police since 9 October 2016, 13 of whom were children, the youngest being ten years old. Two police captains in Maungdaw verified the document and justified the arrests, with one of them saying, "We the police have to arrest those who collaborated with the attackers, children or not, but the court will decide if they are guilty; we are not the ones who decide." Myanmar police also claimed that the children had confessed to their alleged crimes during interrogations, and that they were not beaten or pressured during questioning. The average age of those detained is 34, the youngest is 10, and the oldest is 75.
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