Rights groups and medical workers say General al-Burhan’s Port Sudan junta (SAF) may have used chemical munitions in recent airstrikes on densely populated neighborhoods, killing and maiming civilians in Khartoum, Omdurman and parts of Darfur. The reports have intensified international calls for an independent probe and renewed scrutiny of the war-battered country’s SAF leadership.
Dr. Al-Waleed Adam Madibou, a Sudanese physician and analyst, told media on Friday that field medics documented skin burns and respiratory failure consistent with exposure to toxic agents. “These are not stray bombs,” he said. “They represent a systematic campaign against unarmed people.”
The allegations follow weeks of heavy bombardment by forces loyal to Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, commander of SAF, in a civil war now entering its third year. Witnesses in El Geneina and other Darfuri towns described artillery shells that emitted colored smoke and a pungent odor before residents collapsed.
SAF has denied using banned weapons. The Sudan Times could not independently verify the claims.
‘Silence is complicity’
Kofi Annan’s oft-quoted warning that “silence is complicity” has resurfaced on Sudanese social media, as activists fault the United Nations and African Union for issuing statements of “deep concern” without concrete action. Madibou and other civic leaders want the U.N. Security Council to authorize a no-fly zone over civilian areas and refer alleged offenders— including senior SAF commanders— to the International Criminal Court.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said chemical-weapon use, if confirmed, would constitute a serious breach of international law. “We are gathering information,” spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters Friday in New York.
SAF’s image in free fall
Analysts say the new claims further erode the SAF’s standing. Once viewed as a national institution, the military has fractured into competing factions aligned with tribal, Islamist and regional patrons. “The army behaves more like a coalition of militias than a state force,” said Suliman Baldo, director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker.
Human-rights monitors cite earlier atrocities— including strikes on hospitals and bakeries and mass killings in West Darfur— as proof that rules of war are being ignored. Video footage of corpses in Kutum and Kereneik has circulated widely online but has yet to prompt a formal U.N. investigation.
Opposition figures argue that real stability depends on dismantling the current command structure and rebuilding the security sector under elected civilian oversight. “Sudan needs a brand-new army with a defensive doctrine, not a tool of repression,” Madibou said.
SAF junta negotiators have floated cease-fire talks in Juba, but rebel groups and civil-society panels say any pact that preserves the status quo would only prolong bloodshed. “Without accountability,” Baldo added, “there is no path to peace.”
