US sanctions Sudan for chemical weapons: what we know

PORT SUDAN: The US State Department imposed a new round of sanctions on the Sudanese government Monday, accusing it of using chemical weapons in its war against rival paramilitaries.
Though Washington has not provided details on the chemical weapons used, international media have reported two chlorine gas barrels dropped in 2024.
Since April 2023, the war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces has drawn widespread reports of war crimes, with the US also sanctioning paramilitary commanders for committing genocide in Darfur.
Sanctions
The State Department last month announced a second round of sanctions on the army-aligned government, after last year’s determination that “the Government of Sudan used chemical weapons in 2024,” in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Khartoum ratified in 1999.
Washington has not provided details on where or when the chemical attacks occurred.
Sudan’s army-aligned government has repeatedly denied the US allegations, calling them “baseless” and “political blackmail.”
The latest round of sanctions, effective Monday, further limit Sudan’s access to financing and US exports, and ban Sudan-owned carriers from using US airspace.
History of accusations
Last year, the New York Times and France 24 reported the Sudanese army had used chemical weapons at least twice in the war.
The American outlet, citing four anonymous senior US officials, said the chemical agent used, with the direct approval of army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, was chlorine.
In an October investigation, the French media outlet reported the army dropped two chlorine barrels in September 2024 around the Al-Jaili oil refinery north of Khartoum.
It used open source data, social media footage and five experts to confirm two barrels of chlorine gas had been dropped by aircraft.
The RSF controlled the area and Sudan’s largest oil facility at the time.
The army, which has been in control of Sudan for most of its post-independence history since 1956, has been accused of carrying out chemical attacks before.
In 2016, an Amnesty International investigation accused the army — then allied with the RSF — of using chemical weapons on civilians in the western region of Darfur.
Khartoum denied the accusations.
In 1998, the US claimed that the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was producing chemical components for Al-Qaeda, before destroying the factory in a missile attack.
Past sanctions
Relations between the US and Sudan were strained for decades under the rule of Omar Al-Bashir, who came to power in 1993 and whose Islamist-military rule was long accused of supporting Al-Qaeda.
US sanctions imposed in the early 1990s were tightened in 2006 following accusations of genocide in the Darfur region, carried out on behalf of Khartoum by the RSF’s predecessor militia, the Janjaweed.
After a popular uprising ousted Bashir in 2019, the US removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and began to lift sanctions.
Some were reintroduced following a 2021 coup, led by Burhan alongside his then-deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, before the allies’ power struggle erupted into all-out war in April 2023.
By January 2025, the US had imposed sanctions on both Burhan and Dagalo, who is commonly known as Hemeti.
Expected impact
Sudanese civilians have long borne the brunt of sanctions on their country.
Both Burhan and Hemeti’s camps built considerable wealth while under a decades-long sanctions regime, finessing transnational financial networks while the country was left underdeveloped.
Today, the country is suffering what the UN calls the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with nearly 20 million people suffering acute food insecurity.
The war has killed over 200,000 people, according to some estimates by aid workers, and has unleashed countless atrocities on civilians.
Washington has attempted to play peacemaker for years. Early in the war, it co-hosted truce talks with Saudi Arabia, which failed to yield a ceasefire.
More recently, it has tried to push for a three-month humanitarian truce, but failed to bring the two sides to the table at all.
Both sides are seen to want to prolong the war in hopes of a military victory, despite spending most of their time in a stalemate.