A Sudanese rights organisation reported on Sunday that airstrikes struck a gold mine near the Sudan-Egypt border, leaving a death toll of at least 72 workers, with those who survived recounting disorder across the mountainous area. A rights group operating under the name Emergency Lawyers attributed responsibility for the attack to the Egyptian air force. No official statement from Egypt had been issued, and the account remained unverified by independent reporting from the news channel.
A second strike hit the Jabal al-Uqaydat gold mining area on Saturday, coming months after airstrikes attributed to Egypt left 23 workers dead at the same unregulated site in June. No claim of responsibility came from the army, though its statement at the time described a "large-scale operation" targeting unlawful gold-mining activity within the country's territory. A total of 223 people were taken into custody, among them 136 individuals holding foreign nationality, while authorities also unveiled a drive targeting unlicensed gold extraction and the trafficking of weapons through the region.
Preliminary figures from the Emergency Lawyers, an organisation tracking atrocities in Sudan's ongoing conflict, put the number of civilian miners killed in the Saturday attack at 72, with verification and documentation of the full toll still under way.
Two underground workers who survived described their escape from the mine to a broadcast outlet. Abdelaziz Youssef, who works at the mine, described how a plane appeared overhead at around 8:00 am local time (0600 GMT) that Saturday morning, carrying out five separate strikes that killed a number of people, after which those at the scene moved up the mountainside, fearing the aircraft might return.
Sharaf Ali, another person who survived the attack, recounted that the workforce at the remote location numbered in the thousands at the time of the strike, adding that the dispersal of people in multiple directions afterward — some toward Al-Ansary market, others away from it — had left the full death toll impossible to determine, an account he gave from the gold market lying just to the south of the Halayeb triangle. Accounts from the two survivors described bodies lying in the open as they escaped, with an unconfirmed number of others believed to be trapped beneath collapsed structures in an area well beyond the reach of any nearby city.
A territorial disagreement over the Halayeb triangle, an area valued for its natural resources, has long placed Sudan and Egypt at odds, with each nation maintaining that the land falls within its own boundaries. Spanning several hundred kilometres of uneven highland terrain, the zone encompasses notable mineral resources as well as the contested Halayeb triangle.
Egypt's alignment with Sudan's military places it alongside one side of the armed conflict that force is waging against the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group. Along Egypt's roughly 1,200-kilometre border stretch — sweeping from the Red Sea westward to Libya — the fighting has been assessed by Cairo as a matter of national security concern, a position held alongside its backing of Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
The Emergency Lawyers stated that the incident took place within Sudanese territory, and the organisation's statement characterised the pattern of repeated strikes on border areas containing gold and mineral deposits as an indication of a desire by Egyptian authorities to extend their reach over Sudan's natural resources. In June, the army stated that its forces had been operating within Egyptian territory when the action took place.
Fighting that began in April 2023 has claimed more than 200,000 lives and left large portions of the population without basic necessities, driving many people toward artisanal gold mining — an industry that provides revenue to armed groups on both sides of the conflict. East of the Nile, the territorial corridor has served as a conduit for gold smuggling, illicit goods, and the coerced movement of people — a pattern that Egyptian authorities have worked to address through enforcement measures that have included the large-scale removal of migrants from the area.
