Amnesty accuses Sudan of using chemical weapons in Darfur

Amnesty International has accused the Sudanese government of having conducted chemical attacks against civilians in the conflict-ridden Darfur region, likely killing up to 250 people.

According to Press TV, in a report published on Thursday, the international human rights group said Sudanese government forces carried out at least 30 gas attacks in the mountainous area of Jebel Marra in Darfur between January and September this year.

“An Amnesty International investigation has gathered horrific evidence of the repeated use of what are believed to be chemical weapons against civilians, including very young children, by Sudanese government forces in one of the most remote regions of Darfur over the past eight months,” the report said.

“Between 200 and 250 people may have died as a result of exposure to the chemical weapons agents, with many or most being children,” Amnesty said.

In the nearly 100-page report, the rights group also claimed that the forces had carried out “indiscriminate bombing of civilians... unlawful killing of men, women and children and the abduction and rape of women” in Darfur’s Jebel Marra.

Amnesty said it had given the evidence it had collected — including gruesome photographs of children suffering from chemical burns, satellite imagery, and interviews with more than 200 survivors — to two independent chemical weapons experts, who concluded that chemical agents had been used.

“Both concluded that the evidence strongly suggested exposure to vesicants, or blister agents, such as the chemical warfare agents sulfur mustard, lewisite or nitrogen mustard,” the report read.

Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s director of crisis research, expressed deep concern about the issue, saying “The scale and brutality of these attacks is hard to put into words.”

ME