At least 72 civilian miners were killed on Saturday in a Sudan gold mine airstrike at Jabal al-Uqaydat, an informal mining site on the Sudan-Egypt border, a Sudanese rights group said on Sunday. The Emergency Lawyers organisation accused the Egyptian air force of carrying out the attack.
The group said its figure was preliminary and that efforts to document and verify the toll were still under way. Egypt had issued no comment on the strike by Sunday. AFP, which reported the survivors’ accounts, said it could not independently confirm the rights group’s account.
Sudan gold mine airstrike: what survivors described
Two miners who escaped told AFP that a jet appeared over the site at around 8am on Saturday and struck about five times. One of them said people ran up the mountain in fear of another strike. The second said thousands of people were working at the remote site when it was hit, and that miners scattered in different directions, some towards the Al-Ansary market just south of the disputed Halayeb triangle.
Both men said they saw bodies on the ground as they fled. More people were feared trapped under rubble, hours away from any town. A separate tally cited by the Associated Press, from the Sudan Doctors Network, put the toll far lower, at at least 13 miners killed and 28 wounded, with a warning that it could rise. Readers should treat the 72 figure as the rights group’s early count, not a confirmed total.
Second strike on the same site this year
Saturday’s attack was the second on Jabal al-Uqaydat this year. Strikes in June, also reportedly carried out by Egypt, killed 23 workers at the same informal site. The Egyptian army did not claim those strikes either. It said at the time that it had run a large-scale operation against illegal gold mining within its own borders.
In that June operation, Egypt said 223 people were detained, including 136 foreign nationals. It also announced a campaign against illegal gold mining and arms smuggling in the area. The Emergency Lawyers said Saturday’s attack took place inside Sudanese territory. It accused Cairo of using the repeated strikes to assert control over Sudan’s mineral-rich border regions.
The border itself is part of the dispute. Sudan and Egypt both claim the Halayeb triangle, a resource-rich area near the Red Sea. Cairo is also a key backer of Sudan’s army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in the war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. At the same time, Egypt treats its 1,200-kilometre border with Sudan, running from the Red Sea to Libya, as a major security concern.
Why miners keep working in a war zone
Sudan’s war began in April 2023. It has killed more than 200,000 people, aid workers estimate, and it has pushed huge numbers of civilians into dangerous informal work. Gold mining sits at the centre of that economy. It earns cash for families who have lost everything else, and it also fuels both sides of the war, since gold sales help fund the fighting.
Feature Pakistan’s earlier coverage of an RSF drone strike in Blue Nile state showed the same pattern from the other side of the conflict: women and children killed near a displacement camp, with an informal gold mine just outside it, where families earned daily wages in dangerous conditions. In the north, the risk comes from the air and a border dispute. In the south-east, it comes from the front line. In both places, the people exposed are civilians who went to the mines because the war left them few other ways to eat.
No independent team had reached Jabal al-Uqaydat by Sunday. Until one does, the confirmed facts are narrow: a strike took place on Saturday morning, survivors described repeated hits on a crowded site, and two counts of the dead, 72 and 13, are both in circulation. (Source: Dawn)
Frequently asked questions
Where did the Sudan gold mine airstrike happen?
It happened at Jabal al-Uqaydat, an informal gold mining site on the Sudan-Egypt border, near the disputed Halayeb triangle in Sudan’s River Nile state area.
Who is accused of carrying out the strike?
The Sudanese rights group Emergency Lawyers accused the Egyptian air force. Egypt issued no comment, and AFP said it could not independently confirm the account.
Why do the death tolls differ?
The Emergency Lawyers gave a preliminary count of 72 dead. The Sudan Doctors Network, cited by AP, reported at least 13 killed and 28 wounded. The site is remote, many miners fled, and others are feared trapped under rubble.
Was this the first strike on the site?
No. Strikes in June killed 23 workers at the same site. Egypt said then that its operation against illegal gold mining took place within Egyptian territory.
