Witness testimonies, videos, pictures and other evidence provided by former senior officials of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have corroborated earlier reports that the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) used chemical weapons in attacks between 2024 and 2025.
Speaking to Euronews, the former officials added their voices to an existing trove of evidence reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The OPCW former officials spoke to eight witnesses in Nairobi, Kenya, where thousands of Sudanese refugees had fled to escape the continuing war. They said witnesses were able to provide "a number of credible incidents involving unexplained illness following military activity".
The individuals spoken to were themselves involved in emergency response, had treated victims of the attacks or were directly exposed to the chemical weapons, the report said.
Most significantly, two witnesses described an attack at the Al Jili Oil Refinery in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, which was then under control of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), against whom the SAF was fighting.
They described "barrel-shaped objects" overhead, "unfamiliar odours" and strange emissions and explosives, as well as "acute respiratory symptoms" and changes to vegetation nearby.
The former officials called on the OPCW to launch an investigation. The SAF has continuously denied using chemical weapons.
The war erupted in April 2023 during a power struggle between the SAF and RSF. Sanctioned SAF leader Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan has vowed to continue fighting until the RSF is defeated, rejecting repeated attempts by the US and regional powers to broker a ceasefire. Both forces have been accused of grave abuses.
The US had initially held the SAF responsible for carrying out chlorine gas attacks in 2024, issuing sanctions on the SAF-aligned government as a result.
The New York Times and Washington Post reports revealed the SAF has not only used chemical weapons in the devastating war but also built a secret stockpile that it later attempted to conceal and carried out bomb tests in Sudan's desert.
A Sudanese coalition on Monday called on the UN Human Rights Council to identify and publicly name the countries and external entities supporting the SAF and to renew the mandate of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan.
The SAF is also believed to be collaborating with Yemen’s Houthi rebels to smuggle weapons components. Last September, Moammar Al Eryani, Yemen’s Minister of Information, accused the Iran-backed militia of manufacturing chemical weapons from smuggled components. He said that his assessment was based on recent intelligence from several sources, marking the first direct accusation of its kind from a Yemeni government official.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and created one of the world's largest humanitarian crises, with an estimated 20 million people suffering from hunger.
