Rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Sudanese government forces of killing scores of civilians, including many children, in suspected chemical weapons attacks in a mountainous area of war-torn Darfur.
More than 30 such attacks are believed to have been carried out on several villages as part of a massive military campaign against rebels in Darfur's Jebel Marra between January and September, Amnesty said in a report.
The group said its 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".
"Between 200 and 250 people may have died as a result of exposure to the chemical weapons agents, with many or most being children," the report said.
Amnesty said government forces also carried out "indiscriminate bombing of civilians... unlawful killing of men, women and children and the abduction and rape of women" in Jebel Marra, home to Darfur's most fertile land.
Amnesty said the attacks amount to "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity".
The nearly 100-page report contains gruesome photographs of children suffering from apparent chemical burns, satellite images of destroyed villages and displaced people, interviews with __more than 200 survivors, and analysis by chemical weapons experts.
Amnesty said the attacks were part of a military operation against the rebel Sudan Liberation Army - Abdul Wahid (SLA/AW) group, which Khartoum accuses of ambushing military convoys and attacking civilians.
Sudan's ambassador to the United Nations, Omar Dahab, rejected the report as "baseless and fabricated".
Darfur has been engulfed in a deadly conflict since 2003 when ethnic minority groups took up arms against President Omar al-Bashir's Arab-dominated government, which launched a brutal counter-insurgency.