The State Department on Thursday accused Sudan’s military of using chemical weapons during its long and brutal civil war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The junta that rules Sudan denied the allegations and accused Washington of siding with the RSF.
“The U.S. has determined that the Government of Sudan used chemical weapons in 2024, violating its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce announced on Thursday.
“As a result, we will impose new sanctions, including restricting U.S. exports to Sudan and the Sudanese government’s access to U.S. government lines of credit,” Bruce said.
The State Department said the determination of chemical weapons use was made on April 24, 2025. The Sudanese junta’s alleged violations of the Compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) occurred during 2024.
The State Department delivered its final determination to Congress on Thursday, triggering a 15-day notification period, after which sanctions will take effect.
“The United States calls on the Government of Sudan to cease all chemical weapons use and uphold its obligations under the CWC,” Bruce said.
Bruce did not detail the alleged chemical weapons deployments, but the New York Times (NYT) in January quoted four senior Biden administration officials who said the Sudanese army targeted RSF fighters with chlorine gas on at least two occasions.
According to these officials, both chemical strikes occurred in remote areas, but Washington was increasingly concerned the junta could use chemical weapons in more heavily populated areas where RSF militants were putting up a stiff fight.
Two U.S. officials said only a few top Sudanese military officials were aware of the chemical weapons program — including the junta’s leader, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who authorized both of the known deployments.
The Treasury Department announced sanctions against Burhan for “lethal attacks on civilians, including airstrikes against protected infrastructure including schools, markets, and hospitals” and “using food deprivation as a war tactic” at around the same time as the NYT article was published.
The NYT’s sources said that although chemical weapons violations were not explicitly mentioned in the Treasury Department sanctions against Burhan, they were considered behind the scenes when the decision to apply sanctions was made. Burhan’s former junta partner turned rival for power, RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, was sanctioned for human rights violations a week before Burhan. Both the RSF and Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have been accused of numerous war crimes.
Sudan’s longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in 2019, leading to a two-year “power sharing” agreement between military and civilian forces that ended when Burhan and Daglo dissolved the “transitional government” and implemented a military junta.
Burhan and Daglo subsequently had a falling-out that erupted into one of the world’s most brutal civil wars in 2023. Both sides have dealt harshly with civilians they believed to be assisting their enemies, creating a human rights disaster of fires, famine, disease, and over 700,000 displaced persons.
Khalid al-Aiser, information minister for the Burhan regime, denounced the State Department’s allegations of chemical weapons use as “nothing but political blackmail, and a deliberate falsification of the facts.”
“This false narrative, which the American administration is trying to spread internationally, is just another attempt to mislead public opinion,” Aiser said on Thursday.
“Washington remains silent on documented crimes against civilians in Darfur and other regions, crimes supported by the Emirates who provide militias with strategic drones and sophisticated American weapons,” he said.
The Burhan regime routinely accuses the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of supplying weapons to the RSF. Two weeks ago, Amnesty International (AI) published a report that found “sophisticated Chinese weaponry” has been “re-exported” to Sudan by the UAE, in a “blatant breach of the existing U.N. arms embargo.”
AI said photos and video taken after RSF attacks showed the paramilitary group used Chinese GB50A guided bombs and AH-5 howitzers, both of which were made by a Chinese state-owned corporation called Norinco. The UAE is allegedly the only foreign buyer of both weapon systems.
The RSF has also been seen using Chinese drones, which AI said were also provided by the UAE.
The UAE dismissed AI’s report as “baseless” and said it lacked “substantiated evidence.”
“The UAE strongly rejects the suggestion that it is supplying weaponry to any party involved in the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” said Emirati assistant minister for security and military affairs Salem Aljaberi.
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