00:00This metal canister is the first proof of the use of chemical weapons in Sudan's civil war.
00:15The man is addressing General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan's army.
00:20These images were filmed in September 2024 at the Gari military base north of the capital Khartoum,
00:34five kilometers from Sudan's biggest oil refinery, Al-Jahili.
00:39The base and the refinery were in the hands of the Rapid Support Forces,
00:43a militia which had risen up against their former allies, the army, in 2023,
00:48launching Sudan's civil war.
00:51The Sudanese army was trying to retake the refinery with fighting every day.
00:59But what was the chemical the RSF fighters say was in the canister?
01:05The cylinders that you showed me are routinely used for storing and shipping large quantities of chlorine gas.
01:15Chlorine gas is a dangerous industrial chemical.
01:17It's a weapon that's useful in gas form because it's toxic on inhalation.
01:21It also burns the skin and irritates the eyes.
01:24So there have been incidents where similar containers have been dropped by large helicopters in the Syria war.
01:30The chlorine gas presents itself normally as a bright or dull yellow gas.
01:37There was an incident in the port of Aqaba.
01:40You can see the yellow, the visible yellow cloud.
01:43The RSF fighters had referred to a yellow gas.
01:54Another video shows a yellow cloud over the camp.
02:02Eight days later, another barrel was dropped.
02:05RSF propaganda channels said the barrel was dropped on the refinery.
02:23Our team used satellite images to confirm that the videos were filmed within the refinery, close to its clinic.
02:31The videos show workers in the uniform of the Khartoum Refinery Company, or KRC.
02:38We managed to get in touch with an engineer who was there that day.
02:41There's no indication that anyone died in the incident or suffered long-term injuries.
03:05Experts in ballistics told us the damage to the barrels was consistent with being dropped from an aircraft.
03:12In Sudan, only the Army has aircraft capable of performing such drops.
03:18We found another clue.
03:20A serial number, which we were able to decipher.
03:25It led us to this document.
03:28The canister had been loaded on July 14th, 2024, near Mumbai, India, on board a ship called the RC Ocean, along with 16 other canisters.
03:46The destination, Saudi Arabia.
03:48The canisters were transferred to another ship, the Al-Amed, and brought to Port Sudan, provisional capital of Sudan's army-led government.
03:57They were delivered to a Sudanese company called Port's Engineering Company.
04:06The company is headed by Colonel Anas Yunus.
04:13It specializes in public construction.
04:15But the Indian company that supplied the canisters said Port's Engineering told them the chlorine would be used for purifying water, not for any other use.
04:26Chlorine gas itself is routinely used for water treatment.
04:30A single cylinder like that could easily chlorinate millions of liters of drinking water.
04:36And so that's one of the reasons why it's been very difficult to prevent use of chlorine as a relatively unsophisticated chemical weapon in a few conflicts around the world, because it is so widespread.
04:50Port's Engineering is known to import military supplies to Sudan, according to commercial data collected by C4ADS, a U.S.-based NGO that tracks illicit shipments.
05:01Port's Engineering has likely acted as a procurement vehicle for over one million U.S. dollars worth of Indonesian-made military boots and for thousands of Turkish-made ammunition belts and boxes.
05:12Layered with our corporate discovery of their majority shareholder ship being directed to the Sudanese Armed Forces, as well as one of their directors being a colonel in the army,
05:21we believe that Port's Engineering is very likely linked to staff military supply chains.
05:26This is a part of the ongoing effort by the Sudanese Armed Forces to continue to obfuscate their shipments so that they can continue to arm themselves in the current war.
05:36So were these canisters of chlorine imported to Sudan to be used for water purification or to be used by the army as a weapon?
05:46They are among a total of at least 125 chlorine canisters imported by Port's Engineering Company since the beginning of the war.
05:55We tried to contact the Sudanese Army, Port's Engineering Company, and the Sudanese government,
06:05asking why the canisters were imported to Sudan and what they ended up being used for.
06:11They did not respond to our requests for information.
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