The civil war started in 1991 and continued until 2002, costing at least 50,000 lives and causing local people to suffer killings, mutilation, rape, torture and abduction, mainly due to the brutal warfare waged by rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) claimed that they supported causes of justice and democracy in the beginning, but later on they started to control the villages and to prevent local people from voting for the new government by chopping off their limbs. Victims included children and infants. It created numerous examples of physical and psychological harm across Sierra Leone.