US imposes sanctions on Sudan over chemical weapons allegation

The US State Department imposed a new round of sanctions on Sudan's government on Monday, accusing it of using chemical weapons during its war against the rival Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group.

Washington has not given details on where or when the alleged chemical attacks took place or what weapons were used. International media have reported that two chlorine gas barrels were dropped in 2024.

The State Department announced the sanctions last month after a US determination that Sudan's government used chemical weapons in 2024 in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Sudan ratified the convention in 1999. The sanctions, effective Monday, further restrict Sudan's access to financing and US exports and ban Sudan-owned carriers from using US airspace.

Sudan's army-aligned government has repeatedly denied the US allegations, calling them baseless and political blackmail.

The war between Sudan's army and the Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023. It has brought widespread reports of war crimes. The United States has also sanctioned paramilitary commanders for committing genocide in Darfur.

The New York Times and France 24 reported last year that Sudan's army had used chemical weapons at least twice during the war. The New York Times, citing four anonymous senior US officials, reported that chlorine was used with the direct approval of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. France 24 reported in an October investigation that the army dropped two chlorine barrels in September 2024 around the al-Jaili oil refinery north of Khartoum. The French outlet said it used open source data, social media footage and five experts to confirm that two barrels of chlorine gas had been dropped by aircraft. The RSF controlled the area and Sudan's largest oil facility at the time.

Sudan's army has faced chemical weapons accusations before. Amnesty International accused the army in 2016 of using chemical weapons on civilians in Darfur, when the army was allied with the RSF. Khartoum denied those accusations. In 1998, the United States said the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was producing chemical components for Al-Qaeda before destroying the factory in a missile attack.

US-Sudan relations were strained for decades under Omar al-Bashir, whose Islamist-military rule was accused of supporting Al-Qaeda. The United States imposed sanctions in the early 1990s and tightened them in 2006 after accusations of genocide in Darfur by the Janjaweed militia, the predecessor of the RSF, on behalf of Khartoum.

After a popular uprising removed Bashir in 2019, the United States took Sudan off its list of state sponsors of terrorism and began lifting sanctions. Some sanctions returned after a 2021 coup led by Burhan and his then-deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who is commonly known as Hemeti. Their power struggle became an all-out war in April 2023. By January 2025, the United States had sanctioned both Burhan and Daglo.

Sudanese civilians have long been affected by sanctions, while both Burhan's and Hemeti's camps built large wealth under earlier sanctions by using transnational financial networks, according to the report. Sudan is now facing what the United Nations calls the world's largest humanitarian crisis, with nearly 20 million people facing acute food insecurity. Aid worker estimates cited in the report say the war has killed more than 200,000 people and led to many atrocities against civilians.

Washington has tried to mediate. Early in the war, it co-hosted truce talks with Saudi Arabia, but they did not produce a ceasefire. More recently, it tried to push for a three-month humanitarian truce, but did not get the two sides to meet. The report says both sides are seen as wanting to prolong the war in the hope of military victory, despite spending much of the conflict in a stalemate.