The U.S. imposed sanctions on two Myanmar military units and four border guard and police commanders amid a global outcry from human-rights groups about abuses and mass killings of religious minority groups, including Rohingya Muslims, by the Myanmar government.

The Myanmar military has committed widespread, systematic and brutal acts of violence against Rohingya villagers, the U.S. Treasury Department said Friday, echoing comments from the State Department in November that the situation involving the villagers constitutes ethnic cleansing. The military has also used similar tactics against a number of other ethnic and religious minority groups, such as the Kachin or Shan, Treasury alleged.

“The U.S. government is committed to ensuring that Burmese military units and leaders reckon with and put a stop to these brutal acts,” said Sigal Mandelker, undersecretary of Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Treasury imposed the sanctions using the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the U.S. to target human-rights abusers across the globe and freeze their assets.

Human-rights groups have called for sanctions and other accountability measures against the Myanmar government. The sanctions announced Friday are welcome, overdue and “not enough,” said Richard Weir, the Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch.