A Sudan gold mine collapse kills at least 67 people and many are missing

CAIRO (AP) — A gold mine collapse in a remote area in Sudan has killed at least 67 people, a medical group and survivors said Wednesday, the latest tragedy in a nation mired in a devastating war .

The survivors said the collapse took place at al-Zara gold mine in the town of Nuhud in West Kordofan province, which is controlled by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that have been fighting against the Sudanese military for over three years.

The Sudan Doctors Network, a medical group tracking the war in Sudan, provided the death toll and said it 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.

Two survivors reached by phone and the physicians network said the tragedy took place on Tuesday evening. However, the Kordofan Observatory monitoring group said the collapse was on Sunday in a group of interconnected shafts at the mine that stretched over 1 kilometer (0.6 miles).

The Observatory said at least 70 miners were killed or missing at the site, which stretches across a wide swath of fragile, sandy soil. It described the miners as unregulated and informal workers.

The discrepancy in the accounts of when the collapse happened could not be immediately reconciled.

Survivors said many people remain missing. 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 meters,” he said. “There were dozens of people working in the mine.”

Al-Amin Suliman, one of the surviving miners, said they had recovered 60 bodies as of Wednesday morning, and that “there are still people stuck inside.”

Sudan is a major gold producer but deadly mine collapses are not uncommon in the country, where safety standards are not widely applied. A 2023 collapse killed 14 miners and one in 2021 claimed 38 lives .

The collapsed mine is one of thousands of small-scale and informal mines scattered across Sudan, 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 Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, who control 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.