Egypt Accused of Airstrike on Sudan Border Gold Mine Killing at Least 72 Miners; Cairo Refuses to Respond

According to Agence France-Presse, Sudan's civil legal group the "Emergency Lawyers Organization" said on Sunday that an airstrike on Saturday at an informal gold mine on the Sudan-Egypt border had killed at least 72 civilian miners. The group directly accused the Egyptian air force of carrying out the strike and said the location was within Sudanese territory. AFP also noted that it was unable to independently verify the allegation, and that the Egyptian military had made no official comment following the incident, extending its silence over this deadly strike.

This is the second airstrike this year on the mountainous Jabal Uwaydat mining area. In June, reports already alleged that an Egyptian strike had killed 23 workers. The Egyptian military at the time did not claim responsibility for the strike but said its operations had been conducted "within Egyptian territory" and announced that it had carried out a "large-scale operation" against illegal gold mining and weapons smuggling, detaining 223 people, including 136 foreign nationals. However, regarding Saturday's more deadly strike, Cairo has so far refused to make any public statement.

The Emergency Lawyers Organization stated in a declaration: "Repeated strikes on border areas rich in gold and mineral resources reflect the Egyptian authorities' intent to expand and consolidate control over Sudan's natural resources."

Accounts from surviving miners corroborated the intensity of the strike. Miner Abdulaziz Yusuf told AFP that around 8 a.m. on Saturday, a warplane appeared overhead and "struck five times, and many people were killed." "We ran up the mountain, afraid of being struck again." Another survivor, Sheraf Ali, speaking from a gold mining area south of the Hala'ib Triangle, said that "thousands of people" had been working at the site when the strike occurred and that "after the airstrike, people scattered, some running toward Ansari market and others in the opposite direction, so no one knows the exact death toll." Both survivors said they saw bodies on the ground as they fled, and that more people may still be trapped in the rubble far from any town center. The Emergency Lawyers Organization conceded that the figure of 72 dead is a preliminary count, with documentation and verification still ongoing.

Disputed Territory and the Struggle for Resources

The Hala'ib Triangle, where the incident occurred, is a long-disputed sovereignty zone between Sudan and Egypt, with both countries claiming the resource-rich area. The terrain is rugged and rich in minerals, stretching for hundreds of kilometers. The Emergency Lawyers Organization explicitly stated that the strike occurred within Sudanese territory, but this claim could not be independently verified. Egypt, for its part, drew the boundaries of "Egyptian territory" for a similar operation in June.

The Deeper Context of War

Since the outbreak of armed conflict in Sudan in April 2023, the fighting has killed more than 200,000 people, triggered a severe humanitarian crisis, and pushed large numbers of people into the dangerous informal gold mining sector. Revenue from gold mining has also been used by both the Sudanese Armed Forces and their rivals, the Rapid Support Forces, to sustain their war efforts.

Egypt is a key ally of Sudanese army commander-in-chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, providing him with military and political support. But at the same time, Cairo views the war, which stretches along its 1,200-kilometer border with Libya, as a major security threat. East of the Nile, the porous frontier has for years been an active corridor for gold, illicit trade and people smuggling, which Egypt has attempted to curb through large-scale deportations and other measures.

Regardless of which side's claimed territory the dead miners ultimately fall within, Cairo's silence has already placed this military operation beyond any public accountability mechanism.