Sudan gold mine collapse kills at least 82 people

Gold bracelets and accessories on display at a shop in the Sudanese capital Khartoum's gold market in its downtown district. [AFP]

A gold mine collapse in southern Sudan killed at least 82 people and injured dozens more, a local administrator told AFP on Wednesday, with many others still missing and feared dead under sand and rubble.

Two survivors of the mine collapse in West Kordofan state described to AFP an all-night rescue effort starting on Tuesday, which by dawn had retrieved 60 bodies.

Another 22 bodies were found Wednesday, according to a local administrator within the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which controls West Kordofan and has been locked in a war with the country's military since 2023.

"Fifty people have been injured and there is an unknown number still trapped under the rubble," he told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on behalf of the group's self-declared parallel government.

Since Sudan's war erupted, both sides have been largely funded by the country's gold trade, valued at billions of dollars.

According to Sudanese officials and mining industry sources, nearly all of the gold extracted by both sides flows to the United Arab Emirates, which denies widespread reports it arms the RSF.

With much of the country out of work, many young Sudanese have joined a dangerous gold rush, mostly in unregulated mines such as Al-Zaraa in West Kordofan.

"Everyone's working very hard to retrieve the bodies or any survivors, but it's difficult," one of the survivors, Khair al-Sayyed Jabara, told AFP after an all-night rescue operation with fellow miners, using the same rudimentary tools they use to extract gold.

"We need heavy machinery to clear the rock and soil."

Most of Sudan's gold is extracted from artisanal and small-scale mining, which takes place in decommissioned mines or informal zones like Al-Zaraa.

Miners work with their hands and rudimentary tools for meagre daily wages. To clear gold nuggets from bits of earth, they are exposed to hazardous chemicals including cyanide that often cause widespread illnesses in nearby areas.

The European Union in July banned the sale, transfer and export of mercury and cyanide to Sudan over their use in the exploitative gold trade.

'Don't think they are alive'

Mine collapses are common across Sudan. In the army-controlled north and east, they occur in decommissioned mine shafts where young men sneak in to try to earn a day's wage.

The resource-rich greater Kordofan region to the south has many unofficial mines that are effectively large, unsecured pits in the ground where dozens of young men work every day.

Al-Amin Suleiman, another miner who was working at the rim of Al-Zaraa on Tuesday, told AFP that "the shafts here are all close together. If one collapses, it brings down all the ones next to it".

"There are people still trapped underground since yesterday. I don't think they are alive," he said.

A large-scale rescue operation is all but impossible in West Kordofan, which is under RSF control along with the neighbouring Darfur region, where the paramilitary force has been accused of genocide.

Despite declaring a parallel government and local administrative offices, the RSF's governing capabilities remain limited. People in western Sudan remain mostly reliant on aid and community networks for survival.

Even before the war pushed nearly 20 million Sudanese into severe hunger, artisanal mining employed more than two million people, according to industry figures.

Africa's third-largest country is one of the continent's top gold producers, and recorded a "five-year high" of 70 tonnes of production last year, it said.

But officials say most of the gold is smuggled across Sudan's borders, including through Chad, South Sudan and Egypt before reaching the UAE, the world's second-largest gold exporter.

In July, the EU and the United Kingdom announced sanctions targeting Sudan's gold trade.

The UK said it targeted "illicit gold and finance networks" trading in Dubai and Hong Kong, which it said are helping to finance "weapons procurement, military operations and the activities of armed groups" on both sides of the war.

The UN has repeatedly warned that both sides are profiting from control over the country's resources and that a "war economy" was sustaining the conflict.