Sudan witness recounts alleged chemical attack aftermath
In the Al-Jaili area of Bahri, Sudan, a man said he saw five people lying on the ground and struggling to breathe in September 2024, amid intense fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces. The National reports.
The 50-year-old car salesman, who asked not to be named for fear of persecution by army-linked security forces, said he stopped near armed men who were helping the victims. According to him, intense gunfire and explosions could be heard nearby. When he asked the military personnel whether he could help, they ordered him to leave the area as quickly as possible. Later, a minibus without licence plates took away the five people who were having difficulty breathing.
Reports of contamination
The man suggested that the victims might have been employees of the nearby Al-Jaili oil refinery. Two days later, he said, he learned about possible contamination of the area and a significant number of victims. A relative also told him that two civilians had allegedly died in hospital while being treated for the effects of the contamination.
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The National notes that this account could not immediately be confirmed by other testimony. At the same time, the outlet says it broadly corresponds to the known circumstances of the fighting in Bahri, where the Sudanese army and its allies conducted a weeks-long operation in 2024 to regain control of the capital region, which the Rapid Support Forces had seized at the beginning of the war.
Dossier on alleged programme
The testimony emerged after The New York Times and The Washington Post published a dossier containing evidence concerning an alleged secret chemical weapons programme of the Sudanese armed forces. According to the dossier, the army allegedly developed a programme to create chlorine weapons in 2024, tested it in the desert in July of that year, and then expanded production despite repeated chlorine leaks.
Intercepted voice and text messages cited in the dossier allegedly indicate that Sudanese army commander General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan knew about the programme. After the United States imposed sanctions on Sudan in May 2025 over the use of chemical weapons, he allegedly ordered the official responsible for production to “remove all traces” of the programme, according to the dossier. There is no confirmed information on the number of people killed in the alleged chemical attacks, but investigations have found evidence consistent with chlorine being dropped from aircraft.
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