A deadly gold mine collapse in southern Sudan has left at least 60 people dead, with many more still missing and feared trapped under the rubble. Survivors shared the tragic details on Wednesday after the shafts at the Al-Zaraa site in West Kordofan began caving in on Tuesday while dozens of small-scale miners were working underground.
By the next morning, rescuers had pulled out 60 bodies. Khair al-Sayyed Jabara, one of the survivors, described the desperate overnight effort. “We don’t know how many more are still inside,” he said. Fellow miners worked through the night using only the basic tools they normally rely on to dig for gold. Heavy machinery is urgently needed to clear the rock and soil, yet it remains out of reach.
Sudan’s ongoing war, which started in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has pushed many young people into this risky work. With jobs scarce, thousands have joined the unregulated gold rush. Most of the country’s gold comes from artisanal and small-scale mining in unofficial pits or abandoned shafts. Miners dig by hand for meagre daily wages and often handle dangerous chemicals such as cyanide that harm both workers and nearby communities.
Al-Amin Suleiman, who was at the rim of the Al-Zaraa mine when the collapse began, explained how the tightly packed shafts made the disaster worse. “If one collapses, it brings down all the ones next to it. So far 60 bodies have been pulled out, but people are still trapped underground since yesterday. I don’t think they are alive.”
Mine collapses are common across Sudan, especially in army-held areas where young men sneak into old shafts and in the resource-rich Kordofan region where large open pits operate without safety measures. West Kordofan remains under Rapid Support Forces control, limiting any large-scale official rescue. Local communities and aid networks continue to carry most of the burden.
Even before the war left nearly 20 million people facing severe hunger, artisanal mining supported more than two million Sudanese. Sudan ranks among Africa’s top gold producers and reached a five-year high of 70 tonnes last year. Much of that gold is smuggled out through neighbouring countries before reaching markets in the UAE. Both the European Union and the United Kingdom have recently imposed sanctions aimed at cutting off the illicit gold trade that funds weapons and military operations on both sides of the conflict.
