Seven employees have been injured within the collapse, which occurred in an space managed by the Sudanese Armed Forces.
The partial collapse of a standard gold mine in Sudan’s northeast has killed 11 miners and wounded seven others, in accordance with the state mining firm, as a brutal civil battle between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Speedy Help Forces (RSF) is in its third yr.
Because the battle erupted in April 2023, either side’ battle chests have been largely funded by Sudan’s gold business.
In a press release launched on Sunday, the Sudanese Mineral Sources Firm (SMRC) stated that the collapse occurred in an “artisanal shaft within the Kirsh al-Fil mine” over the weekend within the distant desert space of Howeid, positioned between the SAF-controlled cities of Atbara and Haiya in Sudan’s northeastern Purple Sea state.
One other seven employees have been injured and transferred to a hospital, the SMRC stated.
The corporate added that it had beforehand suspended work within the mine and “warned in opposition to its persevering with exercise resulting from its posing nice danger to life”.
Based on official and NGO sources, almost all the gold commerce is funnelled by way of the United Arab Emirates, which has been accused of arming the RSF. The UAE denies it does so.
The battle has shattered Sudan’s already fragile economic system. The military-backed authorities, nonetheless, introduced file gold manufacturing of 64 tonnes in 2024.
Africa’s third-largest nation is among the continent’s high gold producers, however artisanal and small-scale gold mining accounts for almost all of gold extracted.
In distinction to bigger industrial services, these mines lack security measures and use hazardous chemical compounds that always trigger widespread ailments in close by areas.
Mining collapses are additionally widespread. Comparable incidents lately embrace a 2023 collapse that killed 14 miners and one other in 2021 that claimed 38 lives.
Earlier than the battle, which has pushed 25 million individuals into dire meals insecurity, artisanal mining employed greater than two million individuals, in accordance with mining business sources and specialists.
As we speak, in accordance with these sources, a lot of the gold produced by either side is smuggled to Chad, South Sudan and Egypt, earlier than reaching the UAE, the world’s second-largest gold exporter.
Tens of hundreds of individuals have been killed in Sudan, the place greater than 13 million persons are at the moment displaced on this planet’s largest displacement disaster.
Greater than 4 million have fled throughout borders.
At present, the SAF dominates the north and east of the nation – together with the smallest state by space, however most populous, Khartoum – together with some central areas. The RSF, in the meantime, holds most of western Sudan, together with most of Darfur.
