Cairo, Sep 16: A gold mine collapse in a remote area of Sudan has killed at least 67 people, a medical group and survivors said on Wednesday, the latest tragedy in a nation mired in a devastating war.
Survivors said the collapse happened at the al-Zara gold mine, in Nuhud, a town in West Kordofan province, which is controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that have been fighting against the Sudanese military for over three years.
The Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group tracking the war in Sudan, said the death toll could increase as rescuers continued to search for people trapped under the rubble. The group said the mine — an informal site that employs unregulated workers — lacked basic safety and protective measures.
A local administration official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that 82 bodies had been recovered. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said dozens more people remain missing.
The official said the collapse began on Sunday in one of the mine shafts and spread to the other interconnected shafts. He said only one privately owned forklift is available for the rescue efforts, complicating the search for survivors.
Earlier, two survivors reached by phone and the physicians network said the tragedy took place on Tuesday evening.
The Kordofan Observatory monitoring group said at least 70 miners were killed or missing at the site, which stretches over 1 kilometre (0.6 miles) across a wide swath of fragile, sandy soil. It described the miners as unregulated and informal workers.
Khairal-Sayed Gabara, one of the survivors, said the collapse was “massive,” and that machinery needed to remove the collapsed soil and rubble was not available.
“We do not have the machinery to lift dirt and stones and search for survivors at depths of more than 30 metres (98 feet),” he said. “There were dozens of people working in the mine.”
Al-Amin Suliman, another survivor, said 60 bodies had been recovered as of Wednesday morning. “There are still people stuck inside,” he said.
Despite being a major gold producer, deadly mine collapses in Sudan are not uncommon in a country where safety standards are not widely applied. A 2023 collapse killed 14 miners and one in 2021 claimed 38 lives.
The al-Zara gold mine is one of thousands of small-scale and informal mines scattered across Sudan, which has been engulfed in a war that has at times pushed parts of the country into famine.
Large quantities of gold have been smuggled out of the country to finance the paramilitary RSF, which controls gold-producing areas in Darfur and Kordofan regions, according to experts commissioned by the United Nations.
Sudan plunged into an all-out war in April 2023 as fighting erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese military.
The conflict has killed at least 59,000 people, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, a monitoring group. Aid organizations say the figure is an undercount, and the true number could be many times higher. (AP)
