Sudanese sources have expressed fears that Sudanese army forces, along with their Islamist allies and armed movements, could use chemical weapons in Damazin, Blue Nile State, amid new U.S. media reports confirming the use of such weapons by forces under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, according to what was published by Sudan Times.
The Washington Post has exposed a “secret stockpile” of chemical weapons held by the Port Sudan authorities under the control of the Sudanese army, where “senior officials loyal to army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan sought to conceal it after chlorine bombs were used against the Rapid Support Forces.”
Sudan Times said that “this warning comes in the wake of a U.S. report concluding that the Sudanese army government used chemical weapons in 2024. Washington announced the report in May 2025, alongside the imposition of sanctions.”
In addition to The Washington Post report, a separate investigation published by The New York Times on September 5 of this month drew on an intelligence dossier “containing detailed documents and correspondence concerning the Sudanese army’s development of chemical weapons.”
Reports indicate that messages containing al-Burhan’s name point to his direct knowledge of the program, raising further questions about responsibility at the highest levels of command.
Commenting on this information, a statement by the Civil Democratic Alliance of Revolutionary Forces (Sumoud) regarding reports of the use of chemical weapons in Sudan said that “the alliance followed with grave concern what The New York Times and The Washington Post published in investigations supported by documents, photographs, videos, and messages, indicating that Sudanese army forces established a secret program to produce and store munitions loaded with chlorine gas and used them in the war, and that senior military leaders, foremost among them army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, had direct knowledge of the program and later participated in an attempt to erase its traces.”
The alliance’s statement highlighted “what the two reports cited as allegations that chlorine cylinders intended for purifying drinking water, which arrived through U.N. programs and international relief organizations to serve civilians, were diverted for military use,” considering that “this information is extremely grave, as it documents the production, storage, and use of an internationally prohibited weapon. This cannot be treated as a subject for political bickering, nor can denial serve as a response to it. The use of chemical weapons is a war crime and a flagrant violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, while transforming materials that arrived to save lives into tools for killing constitutes a compounded crime against the Sudanese people and a major breach of international humanitarian law.”
The alliance called on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to “urgently launch an independent and transparent technical investigation, while enabling its experts to access, without restrictions, the sites, documents, and witnesses, and to determine responsibilities in preparation for holding accountable anyone proven to have been involved.” It renewed “its call for an immediate cessation of the war, the protection of civilians, the opening of humanitarian corridors, and the prosecution of all perpetrators of crimes without selectivity, toward a just and sustainable peace and a civilian democratic transition that ends the cycle of wars, authoritarianism, and impunity.”
The case began in May 2025, when the United States announced sanctions on Sudan after accusing the Sudanese army of using chemical weapons during the war with the Rapid Support Forces in 2024. On July 20 of this year, additional U.S. sanctions on Sudan took effect after Washington accused the government of failing to meet the conditions stipulated under the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act within a three-month deadline.
Human Rights Watch confirmed in 2025 that it had independently verified photographs and videos confirming the Sudanese army’s use of chlorine, which is internationally prohibited as a weapon, constituting a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and called on the international community to take action.
At the time, Ida Sawyer, director of the Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, said that a team from the organization had verified photographs and footage showing the use of chlorine gas that had been published in September 2024 from the Jebel Jari military base and the nearby Jili oil refinery north of Khartoum. Both sites were then under the control of the Rapid Support Forces when the attack occurred.
