Many people have gone missing and it is feared that they have died.
The shafts of the Zaros mines near the town of an Nahud in West Kordofan began to collapse on Tuesday, and by the next morning, 60 bodies had been recovered.
“We do not know how many people are still inside,” AFP said one of the survivors, Khair al Sayyed Jabara. He spoke after an all-night rescue operation carried out with other miners using the same primitive tools they usually work with.
“Everyone is working very hard to pull out bodies or survivors, but it is difficult. We need heavy machinery to clear the rocks and soil,” he said.
Since April 2023, when the war broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the war efforts of both sides have been largely financed by the gold industry, with foreign backers also contributing.
The conflict has devastated Sudan’s already fragile economy, and a large part of the country’s population has been left unemployed, forcing many people to engage in the dangerous gold rush.
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Artisanal and small-scale mining, which takes place in unofficial zones or closed mines, accounts for the majority of the gold extracted.
Al Amin Suleiman, another miner working on Tuesday at the edge of Zaros, told AFP that “the shafts here are close to each other and if one collapses, all those nearby collapse as well.”
“That happened here too. So far, 60 bodies have been pulled out, but since yesterday there are still people trapped underground. I don’t think they are alive,” he said.
Sudan is suffering from the world’s largest hunger and displacement crisis; nearly 20 million people in the country face crisis-level hunger.
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