Five large US investment firms will be targeted in a campaign by the US-based Save Darfur coalition over their investments in ­PetroChina, the Chinese oil company, and its parent, CNPC, which the coalition claims are helping to fund arms purchases in Sudan.

The coalition on Wednesday said it was putting Franklin-Templeton, JPMorgan Chase, Capital Group-American Funds, Fidelity Investments and Vanguard – the largest US holders of stock in the Chinese companies – “on notice” that they would soon find themselves “in the line of our activists’ fire in the weeks and months to come”.