Hundreds of mine workers could have died in an airstrike

Tragic events unfold in the north-east of Sudan, where an airstrike on a gold mining area near the border with Egypt could kill more than two hundred people. About the incident in the area of Shamal al-Wadi reports the Sudan Tribune, citing eyewitness accounts.

The attack on the mines was carried out on the morning of October 10, when warplanes fired more than five missiles at the camps of prospectors. The shells destroyed temporary shelters and mines in which gold miners were located at the time.

According to one survivor, the number of victims exceeded two hundred people, with many of the wounded in serious condition. The victims were taken to the El Ansari clinic, as well as to medical facilities in Haya, Port Sudan and Atbar. Witnesses of the tragedy claim that more than fifteen thousand miners were forced to leave the mines and go to the mountains, fleeing the consequences of the strike.

Responsibility for the attack survivors and representatives of the human rights organization Emergency Lawyers laid on the armed forces of Egypt. Human rights activists reported the deaths of at least seventy-two people. At the same time, the Union of Sudanese Doctors confirmed the death of thirteen people, another twenty-eight were injured. At the moment, there is no independent confirmation of these figures, as well as the involvement of Cairo in the incident. There was no official response from the Egyptian side.

The Sudan Tribune reports that this is the second such incident in three months. In June 2026, the Egyptian military announced an operation against illegal gold mining. A long-standing dispute over the ownership of border territories persists between Sudan and Egypt, adding to tensions. The gold deposits in the region are subject to constant risk. On September 21, it became known that at least eleven people died in the collapse of a mine in northeastern Sudan. A few days earlier, on September 16, a mine collapse in South Sudan killed at least eighty-two people.

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