Dozens killed in airstrike on gold mine in Sudan

At least 72 workers were killed by airstrikes on a gold mine on the Sudan-Egypt border, a Sudanese rights group said on Sunday, after survivors described scenes of chaos in the mountainous region.

The Emergency Lawyers rights organization accused the Egyptian air force of carrying out the attack. Agence France-Presse could not independently confirm the account and Egypt has issued no official comment.

The attack on Saturday was the second this year on Jabal al-Uqaydat, after airstrikes, reportedly by Egypt, killed 23 workers in the informal gold mining site in June.

A gold mine worker takes shelter from a sandstorm in al-Ibedia, Sudan, on July 30, 2013.

Photo: Reuters

The Egyptian army did not claim the strikes, but said at the time that it had conducted a “large-scale operation” against illegal gold mining within its borders.

The border between Sudan and Egypt is disputed, with both countries claiming the resource-rich Halayeb triangle. However, Cairo is a key ally of Sudan’s army, at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The attack on Saturday “resulted in the deaths of 72 civilian miners, according to preliminary information, while efforts to document and verify the casualty toll are ongoing,” said the Emergency Lawyers, which documents atrocities in Sudan’s war.

Two survivors described their harrowing escape from the mine.

Miner Abdelaziz Youssef said a jet appeared overhead at about 8am on Saturday and “struck five times, many people were killed.”

“We ran up the mountain terrified of another strike,” he said.

Another survivor, Sharaf Ali, said there were thousands of people working at the remote site when it was hit.

“After the airstrike people scattered, some people came to al-Ansary market, others went in the other direction, that’s why no one knows how many exactly were killed,” he said from the gold market, just south of the Halayeb triangle.

Both survivors said they saw bodies on the ground as they fled, with many more feared trapped under the rubble, hours away from any urban center.

Since April 2023, the conflict has killed more than 200,000 people and created a deep humanitarian crisis that has pushed many into the dangerous gold mining industry, which fuels both sides’ war efforts.