CAIRO — The U.S. Department of Treasury announced sanctions on Friday against three individuals and two firms accused of recruiting and deploying Colombian mercenaries to fight alongside the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan's war. The measures were the latest U.S. action against entities linked to the paramilitary group.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control said the sanctioned entities were involved in recruiting and deploying former Colombian military personnel to Sudan to fight on behalf of the Rapid Support Forces. Hundreds of former Colombian soldiers have been deployed to Sudan since 2024 to assist the group, serving in combat and technical roles and participating in battles across the country, according to a Treasury statement.

The sanctions targeted Fénix, a Bogota-based employment agency established last year as a replacement for A4SI, a firm the United States sanctioned in December for aiding the Rapid Support Forces. Both Fénix and A4SI were founded by Alvaro Andres Quijano Becerra and his wife and appear on a Sudan-related sanctions list. The action also covered the Bogota-based recruitment agency GQAB. Three Colombian nationals were also designated: Quijano Torres, the manager of Fénix; Jose Garcia Batte, the owner of GQAB; and Omar Garcia Batte, the manager and legal representative of GQAB.

The Rapid Support Forces has been at war against the Sudanese military since April 2023. The conflict began on April 15, 2023, when tensions between the two sides exploded into open fighting in Khartoum. The war has killed at least 59,000 people over three years, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which said the figure was almost certainly an underestimate due to difficulties in reporting. The conflict has created a humanitarian crisis affecting about 34 million people, almost two out of every three Sudanese.

Rights groups have accused the Rapid Support Forces of atrocities amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war. The group was born out of Arab Janjaweed militias, which in the early 2000s carried out atrocities against people identifying as East or Central African in Sudan's western region of Darfur. The United States has accused the group of summary executions, ethnically motivated attacks, sexual and gender-based violence, and torture throughout areas under its control, most recently in the Darfur city of el-Fasher. The State Department said in December that members of the group had committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

In October, the Rapid Support Forces attacked el-Fasher. At least 6,000 people were killed in three days during the assault, according to the United Nations. United Nations-commissioned experts said the attack bore the hallmarks of genocide.