The Khartoum government has been using chemical weapons on innocent civilians, including children, in Darfur in its war against rebels, rights group Amnesty International has said.

Amnesty says it has gathered evidence of the repeated use of suspected chemical weapons by the Sudanese government forces in Jebel Marra, one of the remote mountainous regions of Darfur over the past eight months.

Survivors and local human rights monitors provided Amnesty with the names of 367 civilians, including 95 children who were killed in Jebel Marra.

However, the Sudan embassy in Nairobi, has refuted the claims saying that they are fabricated and part of efforts by international human rights and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to constantly paint the Sudanese government in bad light.

Using satellite imagery, more than 200 in-depth interviews with survivors, and expert analysis of dozens of images showing babies and young children with terrible injuries, Amnesty International says its investigation indicates that at least 30 likely chemical attacks have taken place in the Jebel Marra since January 2016, with the most recent being September 9.

“The scale and brutality of these attacks is hard to put into words. The images and videos we have seen in the course of our research are truly shocking; in one a young child is screaming with pain before dying; many photos show young children covered in lesions and blisters. Some were unable to breath and vomiting blood,” said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Director of Crisis Research.

She continued: “It is hard to describe just how cruel the effects of these chemicals are when they come into contact with the human body. Chemical weapons have been banned for decades in recognition of the fact that the level of suffering they cause can never be justified. The fact that Sudan’s government is now repeatedly using them against their own people simply cannot be ignored and demands action.”

Military offensive

The Sudanese government forces launched a large-scale military offensive in January this year against the Sudan Liberation Army-Abdul Wahid (SLA-AW) who they accuse of ambushing military convoys and attacking civilians in Jebel Marra.

However, Elsadig Abdalla Elias, the Sudanese Ambassador to Kenya, told The EastAfrican that the claims were built on bogus and fabricated evidence because Sudan has signed all international treaties which forbid using the chemical weapons.

Mr Elias said that a number of international envoys have visited Sudan recently, including British and US special envoys who went Darfur twice and they did not raise the issue of use of chemical weapons.

Moreover, Mr Elias said that there are many UN organisations, international and regional NGOs working in Darfur, including thousands of joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping troops (UNAMID) but none had mentioned anything about chemical weapons.

“Since this organisation have no base in Sudan and all the evidences were just collected through hearsay, it is therefore obvious that this report has no credibility at all,” said Mr Elias, who added that Amnesty International has no physical presence in South Sudan.

‘World has stopped watching’

Amnesty report says that hundreds more survived the attacks but in the hours and days after exposure to the chemicals, they developed symptoms including severe gastrointestinal conditions involving vomiting blood and diarrhoea; blistering and rashes on skin which reportedly hardened, changed colour and fell off; eye problems including complete loss of vision; and respiratory problems which were reported to be the most common cause of death.

Amnesty International says it presented the findings to two independent chemical weapons experts, who both pointed at evidence of exposure to vesicants, or blistering agents, such as the chemical warfare agents sulphur mustard, lewisite or nitrogen mustard.

“This suspected use of chemical weapons represents not only a new low in the catalogue of crimes under international law by the Sudanese military against civilians in Darfur, but also a new level of hubris by the government towards the international community,” said Ms Hassan.

She added: “Scorched earth, mass rapes, killings and bombs – these are the same war crimes being committed in Darfur as in 2004 when the world first woke up to what was happening. This region has been stuck in a catastrophic cycle of violence for more than 13 years, nothing has changed except that the world has stopped watching.”

Sudan protecting children

But Mr Elias noted that it is not the first time that Sudan has faced such allegations. He said pointed out that in 1998 the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was aerial bombed by the US on allegations that the plant was manufacturing chemical weapons. “Later the whole world including the bombarding country discovered that the allegations was baseless and fabricated,” he said.

He added that his country has a policy of protecting children and that the UN recently welcomed Sudan’s decision to release 21 rebel child soldiers who had been captured in the fighting in Darfur.

“Sudan is currently hosting many refugees and displaced people including children and giving them all the support including food and shelter. How comes a government that initiates such noble causes is at the same time bombing its own innocent civilians using chemicals?” said Mr Elias.

The 1925 Geneva Protocol outlawed use of poisonous gases and bacteriological methods of warfare and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibited the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons.

Sudan, which joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1999, says it has signed all the treaties against the use of chemical weapons.

In 2009 and 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC)issued arrest warrants for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir over the death of more than 300,000 civilians in Darfur.