NAIROBI/WASHINGTON - The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on Sudanese leader and army chief of staff Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, accusing him of choosing war over negotiations to end a war that has killed tens of thousands and millions more. Conflict that displaces people. home.

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that under Burhan, the military's war tactics included indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on schools, markets and hospitals, and extrajudicial killings.

The measures announced by Washington, first reported by Reuters, come just a week after sanctions were imposed on Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and Burhan's rival in the two-year civil war.

Two sources with knowledge of the action told Reuters that one of the aims of Thursday's sanctions was to show that Washington was not taking sides.

Earlier on Thursday, Burhan expressed defiance at the prospect of being targeted.

"I heard there will be sanctions against the military leadership. We welcome any sanctions that serve this country," he said in comments broadcast by Al Jazeera.

Washington also imposed sanctions on the supply of weapons to the military, targeting a Sudanese-Ukrainian citizen and a Hong Kong company.

Thursday's action freezes all their assets in the United States and broadly prohibits Americans from transacting with them. The U.S. Treasury Department said it had issued authorization to allow certain transactions, including activities involving warring generals, so as not to impede humanitarian aid.

In 2021, the Sudanese army and the RSF jointly led a coup that ousted Sudan's civilian leadership, but less than two years later fell apart over plans to integrate forces.

The war that broke out in April 2023 plunged half of the population into starvation.

Dagalo, also known as Hemeti, was sanctioned after Washington determined his troops committed genocide and attacks on civilians. Médecins Sans Frontières has carried out bloody looting in the territory it controls.

Sudan's foreign ministry said in a statement that the latest US move "shows nothing but chaos and a weak sense of justice" and accused Washington of justifying genocide by Reporters Without Borders.

The United States and Saudi Arabia have repeatedly tried to bring the two sides to the negotiating table, but the military has rebuffed most attempts, including talks in Geneva in August aimed in part at easing humanitarian access issues.

Instead, the army has stepped up military operations, seizing the strategic city of Wad Madani this week and vowing to retake the capital Khartoum.

Human rights experts and residents accuse the military of indiscriminate airstrikes and attacks on civilians, most recently a reprisal attack in Wad Madani this week. The United States has previously found the military and Doctors Without Borders guilty of war crimes.

In his final press conference before President-elect Donald Trump's January 20 inauguration, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday it was a "real regret" that Washington has not succeeded in ending the fighting under his leadership. ".

Blinken said that while there had been some progress in delivering humanitarian aid to Sudan through U.S. diplomacy, they did not see an end to the conflict, "no end to the abuses, no end to the suffering of the people." "We will continue to work here for the next three days and I hope the next government will take up this task as well."