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Sudan gold mine collapse toll rises to 82 as rescuers search for missing
Rescuers in West Kordofan are still pulling bodies from the collapsed al-Zara gold mine. The disaster exposes the deadly risks of informal mining in war-ravaged Sudan.
The death toll in the collapse of an informal gold mine in remote Sudan has risen to 82, local officials and activists said on Wednesday, as rescuers continued to search for missing workers with limited equipment. The incident is the latest tragedy in a country battered by war.
Survivors said the collapse took place at the al-Zara gold mine in Nuhud in West Kordofan province, an area controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, which has been fighting the Sudanese military for over three years. By Wednesday afternoon, bodies were still being pulled out and dozens of people remained unaccounted for.
Suleiman Abu Hmeida, a member of the Emergency Response Rooms, said rescuers had pulled out 82 bodies by Wednesday afternoon. "But dozens remain unaccounted for," Abu Hmeida told The Associated Press. The Emergency Response Rooms is a grassroots network that monitors the conflict and supports communities across war-hit Sudan. A local administration official also said 82 bodies had been recovered.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said the collapse began on Sunday in one of the mine shafts and then spread to other interconnected shafts. He said only one privately owned forklift was available for the rescue effort, making the search for survivors more difficult. Earlier, survivors reached by phone and the Sudan Doctors Network had said the tragedy took place on Tuesday evening.
"The collapse is massive and the situation is very dire," survivor Khairal-Sayed Gabara told AP by phone. He said the 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." Another survivor, Al-Amin Suliman, said 60 bodies had been recovered as of Wednesday morning. "There are still people stuck inside," he said.
The Sudan Doctors Network said earlier that 67 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and warned that the toll could rise as rescuers continued the search. The group said the informal mine, which employs unregulated workers, lacked basic safety and protective measures. The Kordofan Observatory monitoring group said at least 70 miners were killed or missing at the site, which stretches over 1 km across a wide area of fragile, sandy soil, and described the miners as informal and unregulated workers.
Al-Zara is one of thousands of small-scale and informal mines across Sudan. Although the country is a major gold producer, deadly mine collapses are not uncommon, with 14 miners killed in one collapse in 2023 and 38 in another in 2021. According to experts commissioned by the United Nations, large quantities of gold have been smuggled out of Sudan to finance the RSF, which controls gold-producing areas in Darfur and Kordofan. Sudan descended into full-scale war in April 2023 when fighting broke out between the RSF and the military. The conflict has killed at least 59,000 people, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, though aid organisations say the real toll could be much higher. The latest mine collapse has again underlined both the dangers of informal mining and the strain of war on rescue and relief efforts in Sudan.
