Published On 7/6/2026
15 people were killed in Sudan as a result of the partial collapse of a gold mine in the Samna area in Wadi Halfa Governorate in the north of the country, according to what the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company Limited announced on Monday.
The company said in a statement that a number of workers entered the “Mohamed Tawfiq” mine in the Halfa area near the Egyptian border, even though it was closed after technical evaluations proved it was dangerous, which led to parts of the mine collapsing on them, killing 15 workers and wounding one.
The company explained that decisions to close mines are issued only after careful technical and engineering evaluations, the primary goal of which is to protect lives and prevent accidents.
It reported that immediately after the accident occurred, it sent its field teams to the site, in coordination with the mining police and rescue teams of the state government and Wadi Halfa Governorate, and began rescue, ambulance, and recovery operations.
Two million workers
The private mining sector accommodates more than two million people working in the vast regions of Sudan amid extremely harsh conditions, and they produce about 80% of the total amount of gold extracted in this country, which relies on the yellow metal as a major source of foreign exchange, after losing three-quarters of its oil revenues due to the secession of South Sudan in July 2011.
Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in mid-April 2023 between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, the war effort of both parties has been largely funded by the gold industry, in addition to support provided by external parties, according to various reports.
The war caused great damage to Sudan’s already weak economy and deprived a large part of the population of their livelihood, forcing many of them to work in gold mines that lack proper safety procedures and use highly dangerous chemicals, causing the spread of diseases on a large scale in neighboring areas.
While Sudan is the third largest gold-producing country on the African continent, Sudanese officials say that a large portion of this metal is smuggled through Chad, South Sudan and Egypt to reach the United Arab Emirates, the second largest gold exporter in the world.
